Wal-Mart held a “secret” sale on Friday last week with (according to PC Magazine) “some big deals for tech enthusiasts”. Typically holiday sales begin at Thanksgiving, but Wal-Mart launched its sale earlier than most other retailers and earlier than it has in the past.
Share of US Internet visits to Wal-Mart.com were up 26% last week compared with the week before and were up 6% compared with the same week last year. The Shopping and Classifieds category saw visits increase 4% last week, indicating that Wal-Mart comfortably outperformed the sector.
There is a natural seasonal lift in traffic to retail websites at this time of year so it is important to check a site’s performance against the relevant industry. As the chart below illustrates, Wal-Mart’s traffic was following a similar pattern as the Shopping and Classifieds category until last week.

The Walmart sale began Friday 2nd November but the spike in traffic came a day earlier. Share of US Internet visits to Walmart.com were up 44% from 31st October to 1st November and 1 in 50 visits to a Shopping and Classifieds website went to Walmart.com on 1st November.
It appears that word of the sale spread by word of mouth and email. The top sources of traffic to Wal-Mart.com last week were search engines and email services, with increases seen from both last week. The top website visited after Wal-Mart.com last week was the Walmart Holiday microsite.
The holiday shopping season is heating up early this year with Wal-Mart out of the gates early.