In July, BarnesandNoble.com launched the e-books section of their online bookstore with the intention of capitalizing on the growing market. Consumers have increasingly been turning to e-books that equip a reader with added conveniences and often a chic electronic device. Although Barnes & Noble lacks, at least for the time being, an e-reader similar to Sony’s e-reader or Kindle, Amazon.com’s industry leading e-reader, digital bookworms welcomed the new e-bookstore with open arms.

The e-books section of BarnesandNoble.com was visited by more than four times as many people as Amazon.com’s Kindle Store (and over 75x Sony’s eBookstore) in its first week. However, their successful launch cooled rather quickly after a few weeks.

One possible reason why BarnesandNoble.com’s e-books section couldn’t maintain their initial momentum was due to the lack of an official e-reader. Unlike Sony and Amazon, BarnesandNoble.com presently only offers an application a person can download to their PC, Mac, iPhone/iTouch, or Blackberry. While the free download is nice, the e-book experience isn’t the same without an e-reader like Kindle. Given this shortcoming, how was BarnesandNoble.com able to entice so many shoppers to visit their e-books section?

A highly effective email campaign helped to lure book lovers to BarnesandNoble.com’s new e-books department. When looking at the role of Webmail in driving traffic to the various e-books stores last month, BarnesandNoble.com stood out with 17% of its traffic coming from webmail.

Who did BarnesandNoble.com target when marketing their new e-books: consumers of rival e-bookstores or the untapped market of paper-book readers? An important commonality among the three e-book competitors to keep in mind is the lack of cross-platform compatibility. Since an e-book purchased from one retailer will not read on an e-reader associated with a different retailer, cross-shopping becomes a strong indicator of consumer churn.

BarnesandNoble.com’s e-book shoppers were the least likely to cross-shop at one of its two main rivals. Since their e-book section was just launched, this indicates that their customers are new to the market rather than converts from either Sony or Kindle.

BarnesandNoble.com’s appeal to the common reader will gain even more traction when the Plastic Logic Reader hits the market sometime early 2010. The Plastic Logic Reader will be exclusive to BarnesandNoble.com’s e-books and will turn the battle against Kindle into a fair fight. A large part of Kindle’s appeal is the convenience and function of the e-reader itself. Although still in Kindle’s giant shadow, BarnesandNoble.com’s e-books may be poised to rise out of it soon. Having already proven the ability to draw interest from consumers new to the market, Barnes & Noble needs to sustain and further develop that interest. The Plastic Logic Reader may be the final piece to the puzzle in BarnesandNoble.com’s efforts towards supplanting Kindle from the top of e-books industry.

The days leading up to Valentine’s Day are some of the busiest for online floral retailers (only Mother’s Day is busier). Big money is required to remain competitive in this market. Both 1800-Flowers.com and ProFlowers.com appeared on the homepage of Yahoo! the week prior to Valentine’s Day and Teleflora.com aired a TV spot during the Super Bowl. In the weeks leading up to Valentine’s Day, each of the top four online floral retailers (1800-Flowers.com, FTD.com, ProFlowers.com, and Teleflora.com) saw a major increase in traffic. ProFlowers.com claimed the biggest spike in weekly visitors, increasing 423% in the first two weeks of February.

When looking at Share of Voice (the percent of visits within the competitive set) over the first two weeks of February, FTD.com and ProFlowers.com stand tall with 40% and 30% of visits, respectively. However, when also considering the Share of Wallet (the percent of purchases made within the competitive set) over the same timeframe, ProFlowers.com clearly separates itself. They accounted for 54% of all the purchases made at one of these four retailers.

In fact, ProFlowers.com led the field in two key metrics: bounce rate and conversion rate. The lowest bounce rate (percentage of visits that result in the visitor immediately leaving the site) and the highest conversion rate both belonged to ProFlowers.com by a comfortable margin. It appears that ProFlowers.com was much more effective at driving quality traffic to their site, as their shoppers were engaged and more likely to make a purchase.

Today’s economic climate is certainly not news to anyone. As consumers tightened their sweetheart budgets, the leading online florists pulled out all stops to gain market share (one going so far as advertising during the Super Bowl). In 2009, ProFlowers.com clearly outperformed its top rivals by having more online transactions than their top three competitors combined. For rival florists, understanding what tactics have helped ProFlowers.com succeed online will be critical to their efforts to regain lost market share as they gear up for another battle come Mother’s Day.

Everyone knows about Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but few have heard about “Green Monday,” which is designated as the second Monday of December. Green Monday may be relatively obscure because it was named by eBay in a marketing campaign for late-season holiday shopping; however, the idea behind it is important because it supposedly marks online shoppers’ the last chance to order items without having to pay for expedited shipping (which usually means the end of free shipping offers). This year, December began on a Monday, which caused debate over the real date of Green Monday. By definition Green Monday was December 8, however, some anticipated December 15 to be a busier day because it better represented the true last chance to save on shipping.

In the chart below, we see the daily volumes of online purchasers during the holiday season across 10 leading retailers for this year and 2007.

*Leading Retailers are: Amazon.com, BestBuy.com, JCPenney.com, Kohls.com, Macys.com, Overstock.com, Sears.com, Target.com, ToysRUs.com, and Walmart.com

Last year saw four distinct purchase peaks during the holiday shopping season, all of which were relatively close to each other in terms of volume. This holiday season, neither Green Monday, nor any other single day could match the activity of Cyber Monday and Black Friday. Across this group of 10 retailers, Cyber Monday had at least 25% more people make a purchase online than the next closest day in December.

*Leading Retailers are: Amazon.com, BestBuy.com, JCPenney.com, Kohls.com, Macys.com, Overstock.com, Sears.com, Target.com, ToysRUs.com, and Walmart.com

The increased level of purchases is also apparent when analyzing conversion rates across these retailers. On all four of the above days, the daily conversion rate (percent of shoppers making a purchase) increased in 2008 from the prior year as shoppers become more accustomed to doing their gift buying through a retailer’s website. Also worth noting is that, in 2008, Green Monday had the lowest conversion rate out of the four days after being the highest in 2007.

Last year, similar amounts of online shoppers made purchases on Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Green Monday, as well as the following Monday. This year, shoppers purchased online much more frequently on Black Friday and Cyber Monday than they did on any other day of the season.

As retailers pull out all the stops to salvage their years, shoppers are increasingly realizing that clicking a mouse can be a much more pleasant shopping experience than wrestling the last item on the shelf away from a stranger and waiting in never-ending checkout lines.

The recent economic turmoil is poised to make this holiday season a downer for many retailers who had hoped to end the year on a positive note. Each week through the end of the year, Compete will be tracking which retail products are drawing the most online interest from shoppers. A look at the leading products from this past week suggest that while consumers’ budgets will be pinched this year, certain products, such as video game consoles will be as popular as ever.

Highlights for the Week of October 19-25

• Led by the Nintendo Wii console, video games made up the majority of the most coveted items online last week. Nearly a quarter million people shopped online for a Wii last month. The three leading consoles and their related games made up 6 of the top 10 as well as half of the top 20.
• Aside from the traditional gaming systems, the Leapster, an educational handheld gaming system continues to be popular. Other electronic devices, notably iPods and GPS devices, fared quite well too.
• Online interest in the High School Musical 3 soundtrack jumped 256% from the prior week in the lead-up to the film’s theatrical release last weekend.
• Interestingly enough, the top DVD last week doesn’t even come out for another month.

Too see which movie I’m talking about, as well as the rest of the 25 hottest products last week, visit Compete’s Data Hub. Don’t forget to check back every week for updates. Will anything top Nintendo Wii? Will Elmo Live be the next Tickle Me Elmo or just the next Tickle Me Cookie Monster? Stay tuned.

For the past seven years, visitors to Borders.com have been automatically redirected to Border’s hosted site on Amazon.com. While hitching a ride on Amazon’s phenomenal growth at one time was likely a sound business decision, in hind sight that short-term fix to Border’s ecommerce woes handicapped Border’s online growth and its brand in general. The Border’s store on Amazon.com lacked its own identity and gave shoppers little incentive to continue shopping via Borders.com on subsequent visits. Not surprisingly, over the past five years, Borders.com traffic has remained virtually unchanged at around 250,000 unique visitors per month.

This past May that all changed when Borders.com re-launched its own website, and took back the reins to its online destiny. Toys R Us, it’s worth noting, made a similar decision two years ago, and since that time the toy retailer has successfully reclaimed its category leadership.

Not content to just launch a pretty website, Border’s did their homework and has created a site that offers book lovers an innovative experience that brings more of the joy of visiting a bookstore to the online world. One feature, the “magic shelf” seeks to more closely mimic the experience of browsing through bookshelves and discovering new titles.

Before re-launching the site, Borders.com traffic was half that of lesser-known bookstores BooksAMillion.com and Powells.com. Borders.com trailed its primary brick-and-mortar rival, BarnesAndNoble.com by a far greater margin. However, once the new Borders.com went live, there was instantly a spike in traffic that saw them vault past their smaller rivals and into contention with BarnesAndNoble.com.

Borders has been putting forth a strong effort to increase the traffic and sales on its new site. In July, Borders.com ran a campaign inviting its visitors to enter in a chance to win a $1,000 gift card by watching a short video that highlighted various features of the new Borders.com. Everyone who entered received something for their effort, such as discounts on purchases made on the site. This campaign was successful in increasing sales and creating more engagement on the site, as visitors who entered in the sweepstakes spent much more time on the site and were more likely to place an order.

Since its launch, Borders.com has seen its share of visitors placing an order steadily increase each month. In July, Borders.com converted 5.0% of visitors, which puts them in-line with BarnesAndNoble.com’s 5.9% conversion rate. Borders has attracted many new visitors to its site and the new traffic is purchasing online with increasing frequency.

Parting ways with Amazon.com already seems to be paying great dividends for Borders. After only a couple of months, the world’s second largest bookstore chain now has the online presence to match its offline magnitude.

Hulu.com, the online video site owned jointly by NBC Universal and News Corporation (Fox) launched earlier this year, currently streams numerous network and cable television programs (and a few movies too), including the majority of NBC’s and Fox’s Primetime lineups. Both Fox.com and NBC.com continue to stream most of their respective programming, either in the form of clips or full episodes, free of charge and with far fewer commercials than the televised broadcast. There are numerous third party video sites to view streaming television content, but viewers have traditionally gone to a network’s official website the most. Now that there is an alternative to the official site which is owned by two of the networks themselves, where are the viewers going to watch their shows online?

Here we look at the top five comedies for both Fox and NBC and observe the share of the total combined time spent viewing these episodes on their respective homepages and Hulu.com. For the top five comedies on Fox, viewers spend more than twice as much time watching on Hulu.com than they do on Fox.com. For the top NBC comedies, NBC.com barely edges out Hulu.com in total viewing time. This is only because The Office, which happens to be the most watched show (in total online viewing time) on either network, is watched primarily on NBC.com. When The Office is excluded, Hulu’s total time share of the remaining four NBC comedies jumps up to 60%.

Below we see the top five comedies for each network and quantified how much time was spent viewing that specific show on its network’s official website versus Hulu.com.

When observing the top five dramas on each of the two networks, a completely different picture is painted. The vast majority of the time spent viewing these programs online occurs on either Fox.com or NBC.com. Very little time is spent watching any of these programs on Hulu.com.

Hulu.com’s visitors seem to prefer watching comedic content rather than dramas. Recently, Hulu acquired the rights to stream full episodes of The Daily Show with John Stewart and The Colbert Report. Hulu is already a factor when it comes to streaming network comedies, so it will be interesting to see what impact adding these two shows will have.