With the majority of standard shipping deadlines upon us from online retailers, traffic has increased for the websites of major shipping providers. For these websites, avoiding a site failure should be easy thanks to the predictability of the peaks. Historically, there are 2 consecutive days that make up the peaks in traffic – the Tuesday and Wednesday before Dec. 25; in 2005 the peaks occurred on Dec. 20 & 21 and in 2006, Dec. 19 and Dec. 20. The same trend has continued for 2007 with the highest market share in visits to shipping sites occurring on Tues, Dec. 18 and Weds, Dec 19. The 1st peak day increased 12% from last year, and the 2nd peak increased 17%. The regularity of the peaks is interesting as many retailers have pushed back shipping deadlines to accommodate procrastinators, yet shoppers stick to the same calendar each year.

The majority of traffic being referred to the Shipping category* naturally originates from the retailers themselves either from their own sites or via email confirmations. The sources of the traffic highlight the importance of easy package tracking for customers because multiple sources (e.g. retailer’s sites, email, search) are being used to access information. Shoppers need simple processes to track packages to assuage fears of gifts not arriving on time as the holidays approach and retailers ultimately benefit from the customer service cost savings. Many online retailers have done a good job streamlining this process, however some time-consuming barriers still exist such as forcing an account log-in to access shipping info.
The chart below shows us the strength of the referral channels throughout the holiday season. For the week ending Dec. 15, 2007, the categories of Shopping and Classifieds and Email referred 27% and 26% of traffic, respectively. Search engines ranked third as a source for upstream traffic, sending 15% of traffic to the shipping sites.

The retailer emails alerting that a package has been sent is one of the most obvious triggers for a consumer to track the progress & estimated delivery dates for gifts. Yahoo! Mail And Windows Live Mail were the most popular email sites driving traffic, sending 15% and 8%, respectively.
In the spirit of the season, we’ll need some sort of name for these days… suggestions are welcome!
*The custom Shipping category is made up of the websites for UPS, USPS, Fed-Ex, and DHL USA.