Nielsen Online just published the top 10 online retailer of Q4 2008.  Interestingly enough Amazon and Play were the only 2 pure play brands in the top 10.  The top 10 sites averaged a 37% year on year traffic increase.
Location: PostList

28 million online shoppers spent £9.4 billion online during the Christmas period.

Boxing Day was the busiest day of the year in terms of traffic to online retail sites but was still down about 5% compared to Boxing Day 2007.  The second busiest day was Sunday 30th November with visits up 16% compared to last year.

Over 5million people went online on Christmas Day and spent over £100 million.

John Lewis saw traffic on Christmas Day up 12 times compared to 2007.

PC World, Currys and Dixons saw an increase of 30% to 40% in visitors on Christmas morning with visitor numbers peaking between 1am and 5am.

Hitwise reported that Next's sale was the most searched for online during the Christmas period and Next cleverly installed a 'virtual queue' system to cope with site traffic. 

 

Location: PostList