American Greetings, which provides greeting cards through a number of Web sites, saw its traffic decline by 10% from November to December 2001. But it wasn’t due to a lack of holiday feeling.
No, the falloff coincided with imposition of a new charge of $11.95 to access and send most of the firm’s cards.
In contrast, Yahoo! Greetings, which remains free, saw its traffic increase by 70%, for a total of 9.1 million unique users in December. Hallmark.com experienced a 74% boost to 8.2 million.
Those statistics were released in a report Thursday by Jupiter Media Metrix.
According to Jupiter, visitors also spent more time on the free sites. For example, Yahoo! Greetings saw a 24% increase to 10.5 minutes in December, while American Greetings experienced a 24% decline to 10 minutes.
“Some of the top players in the e-greetings category appear to be joining many sites in an effort to pursue alternative revenue sources, thereby minimizing their reliance on online ad revenue,” said Charles Buchwalter, vice president of media research, Jupiter Media Metrix, in a statement. “Timing is everything, and embarking on this strategy during the holiday season and in a depressed economy could backfire, allowing free, ad-supported services to gain share.”
Jupiter also reported that surfers tried to circumvent the paid sites. The percentage of American Greetings visitors who visited more than one company site increased from 16% in November to 27% in December.
These visitors may have checked out other American Greetings sites to see if they could get around the fee, Jupiter said.
But the news wasn’t all bad for American Greetings. Bluemountain.com, the firm’s largest site, experienced a 24% traffic falloff. But two other company sites–Americangreetings.com and Egreetings.com–grew, the latter by 74%.
