Photo books are clearly one of the hot gifts this year, and web analytics firm Compete took a closer look at the state of this market today. According to Compete, traffic to all of the major photo printing sites like Kodak Gallery, Shutterfly, Snapfish, and MyPublisher rose in November, with Snapfish seeing over 25% more traffic compared to last November. While Snapfish gets most of its traffic from Yahoo and Google, the site that put it over the top was Oprah.com, which featured a coupon for a free photo book last month.]]>
The Power of Oprah
Looking at all the top referrals to both Shutterfly and Snapfish, it is interesting to note that Yahoo - and not Google - drives the largest amount of traffic to both sites.
For November however, the power of Oprah.com is quite interesting. Oprah drove almost 4% of Snapfish's traffic - more than MSN and Comcast combined. As Cynthia Stephens from Compete rightly points out, however, Snapfish now has to find a way to retain these customers. The stats from Compete suggest that Snapfish still has some work to do there.
As we have pointed out in earlier stories, it is hard to underestimate the power of Oprah when it comes to bringing any issue to the attention of mainstream TV viewers. Oprah's podcast with Eckhart Tolle, for example, topped the iTunes charts, while her promotion for Amazon's Kindle gave that device a nice sales bump.
Image of Oprah and Obama used courtesy of Flickr user Joe Crimmings
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