Rumors are circulating (again), that woot! has received an investment from Amazon. While this may just be speculation, it reminded me that several of my friends have been addicted to this website for some time. They diligently check woot! each day to see the daily deal – which they often debate, then purchase because they simply could not resist. Traffic to Woot.com is still small, but growing, the market share of visits increased 8% for the week ending Jan. 12, 2008 compared to the same week in 2007. Woot! does have some variability in the traffic patterns since the traffic is highly dependent upon the amount of interest in the specific product being offered for the day and the availability of the product.

The limited time-only offers have been successful in developing a loyal following for woot!, with 88% of its traffic consisting of returning visitors. The audience is heavily male, 65% of the traffic for the 4 week period ending 01/05/2008, mostly due to the types of products being offered – consumer electronics and computers.
Woot’s sources of traffic are diversified across a number of industries. Rather than relying on search to drive traffic, like many retailers, the site receives the greatest share of traffic from email, portal frontpages, and social networking sites. The loyal customer base helping to generate interest through word of mouth is probably a strong asset for woot!, based upon the amount of traffic coming from email and social networking sites.

An Amazon investment in woot! would make a lot of sense – the websites have partnered in the past to help source inventory for Amazon’s Gold Box promotions and woot’s product lines are complimentary to Amazon’s strengths in the consumer electronics & computer categories.