Hitwise reports that a range of Harry Potter related websites witnessed a huge increase in traffic as the fifth installment in the Harry Potter book series became available for sale in the U.S. on
Saturday, June 21. Surprisingly, Barnes & Noble (www.bn.com) witnessed an increase in U.S. visits while Amazon.com experienced a decrease in visits for the week ending June 21 as the hype of Harry
Potter and The Order of The Phoenix gripped the nation. Traffic to Barnes & Noble increased by 20% in share of visits to Shopping & Classifieds - Books websites in the last week. Other leading Book
retailers were www.amazon.com (a decrease by -2%), www.half.ebay.com (-1%), www.amazon.co.uk (+1%) and www.booksamillion.com (+24%). Harry Potter mania has likewise contributed to a sharp rise in
overall traffic to the book sector, with traffic to the Hitwise Shopping & Classifieds - Books category increasing by 2% (week ending June 21). Traffic to www.scholastic.com (the U.S. publisher for
Harry Potter) increased by 55% in the last week (week ending June 21). Almost half the traffic to www.scholastic.com (45%) came from Search engines and Directories, 7% from other children's websites -
MSN Kids (3.33%) and Yahooligans! (1.29%), and not surprisingly 3.33% from harrypotter.warnerbros.com. The leading shopping websites visited after Scholastic were Barnes & Noble (4.57%), Walmart (3%)
and Amazon (2.7%). The official Harry Potter website (harrypotter.warnerbros.com) has seen an increase in U.S. visits of 122% since June 16th in the lead up to the book launch in the U.S. The
demographics of visitors to the website reveals that Harry Potter is loved by children and adults alike - 38% of visitors were aged between 35 and 44, with women (62%) being the dominant gender. Three
other fan-related Harry Potter websites to witness an increase were boards.harrypotter.warnerbros.com, (+178%), www.the-leaky-cauldron.org (+92%) and www.mugglenet.com (+80%).
