Apple leads in traffic to computer manufacturers’ sites

“Apple Computer Inc. led in number of unique visitors to computer hardware manufacturers’ web sites, with 4.5 million, for the week ended Aug. 15, Nielsen/NetRatings reports. Dell Inc. ranked second with 2.9 million visitors, followed by Hewlett-Packard Co., with 1.9 million, Gateway Inc., 453,000; Sun Microsystems Inc., 414,000; and XBOX, 396,000,” InternetRetailer.com reports.

“Apple also led in the average time per visit, at 13 minutes, 15 seconds, followed by Dell, at 12 minutes, 14 seconds; HP, 8 minutes, 54 seconds; Gateway, 5 minutes, 44 seconds; XBOX, 4 minutes, 53 seconds; and Sun Microsystems, 3 minutes, 7 seconds,” InternetRetailer.com reports.

Full article here.

17 Comments

  1. Just me worrying but, how can they tell how long I spend at their site? Sometimes I leave a window up a long time but not reading it, or I’ll have several tabs open, do they all count towards time per visit?

  2. >shipwithsails wrote: Sometimes I leave a window up a long time but not reading it, or I’ll have several tabs open, do they all count towards time per visit?

    Yep. It does count. I do the same with sites loading in tabs – Apple being a site I’ll load up in the background while viewing other sites. I’ll often time out before I get to view the Apple Store page.

    Stats like these should be taken with a grain of salt, but this is a good sign for Apple.

  3. >shipwithsails wrote: Sometimes I leave a window up a long time but not reading it, or I’ll have several tabs open, do they all count towards time per visit?

    Yep. It does count. I do the same with sites loading in tabs – Apple being a site I’ll load up in the background while viewing other sites. I’ll often time out before I get to view the Apple Store page.

    Stats like these should be taken with a grain of salt, but this is a good sign for Apple.

  4. I am very surprised at the huge difference between #1 Apple with 4.5M and #2 Dell with 2.9M. Some of this may be due to the difficulty in being able to see an Apple in a store.

    The amount of time spent on the site is almost meaningless because long times can be either from reading something interesting or from trying to navigate through an unintuitive, maze-like, website. But, we do know that on Apple’s site it’s not hard to find anything. But, people on Apple’s site usually look at both the hardware AND the OS on the same website.

    I am hoping that for whatever reason (iPod, no viruses, seen in the background on tv, etc.) people are checking out these “new” alternatives to the frustrating Wintel boxes; “Switchers”. This may be the first real sign that the tide is turning.

    Congratulations, Steve & Co.!!

  5. When measuring time, the arithmetic mean does not work very well, and in cases where people have a window open for a long time without looking at it the statistics are even more misleading. Better to use the median or the geometric mean. the people that are reporting this stuff should know better. it is the technical equivalent of enderle or thurott writing something.

  6. I frequently will log on, go to a site like MDN, download the pages I want to read (Safari Tabs is great for this) and read them offline. Yes, I’m using a modem at home. Not everyone has a T-1 plugged into their home.

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