Sears Holdings Ranked Third in Multichannel Retailer Web Traffic During Busiest Shopping Weekend of the Year

HOFFMAN ESTATES, Ill., Dec. 15, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Sears Holdings announced it ranked third in overall Web traffic for a multichannel store retailer during week ending Nov. 27, which included Thanksgiving and Black Friday, according to Experian Hitwise.* Customers who visited sears.com and kmart.com had access to millions of items, along with brand new features that made online shopping easy.

"Our focus for the Thanksgiving and Black Friday weekend was to provide customers hot deals on the products they wanted most," said Imran Jooma, president of eCommerce at Sears Holdings. "Our sites offer customers a vast assortment of merchandise ranging from books and electronics to jewelry, appliances and apparel. Customers value the choices we provide that save them time and money."

As an innovative leader in the online retail space, Sears Holdings is constantly evolving its online offerings to give customers added convenience while shopping. Customers can use tools such as product quick view, express check out and mobile shopping to search, browse and buy items faster and easier than ever before.

The buy online pick up in-store features provide customers the option to conveniently shop online or from a mobile device and then get their order that same day. This service saves time for customers in a hurry, virtually eliminating the wait to receive products, while avoiding the shipping costs.

Site design modifications prior to the holiday enhanced the shopping experience and provided a superior search and browse navigation along with a new cart feature, each of which helps customers shop with ease. According to the Gomez Retail User Experience Index, Sears Holdings was ranked as a top retailer for site performance during the Thanksgiving and Black Friday weekend.**

"We are always actively listening and interacting with customers to learn from their feedback, develop new shopping tools and enhance site speed to make their lives easier," added Jooma. "We encourage conversation with our customers and take that into consideration when developing new features and functionality on our sites."

These features and services are all a part of Sears Holdings' ShopYourWay (SM) campaign, which launched last year. ShopYourWay gives customers the power to shop how, when and where it's most convenient for them. Features include:

• Option to Get It Today— Sears.com offers buy online pick up in-store, third-party and curbside pick up. Buy online pick up in-store on sears.com is backed by the Ready in 5 guarantee; orders will be ready in five minutes from the time customers arrive in-store or they'll receive a $5 coupon. For the first time this Holiday season, kmart.com customers are able to take advantage of buy online pick up in-store powered by the innovative mygofer service.
• Mobile Shopping from Anywhere, Anytime— Sears.com, kmart.com and mygofer.com have mobile capabilities that allow customers to shop wherever and whenever they want. Visit Sears2go, Kmart2go or mygofer2go from any Web-enabled smartphone or download the applications.
• Merchandise Selection— Choose from millions of products on sears.com, ranging from apparel and appliances to books and electronics, jewelry, shoes, tools, power and garden equipment and more. Customers can use the product quick view feature for instant access to product details without having to navigate from their current page.
• Shipping and Saving – Get orders shipped overnight, standard, expedited, shipped to store or internationally to over 90 countries. The sears.com ShipVantage service gives customers exclusive savings on sears.com and kmart.com shipping options.
• Pay Your Way— Customers can pay whichever way is most convenient for them with choices like Online Layaway, Express Checkout, PayPal or eBillme.
• Expanded Ways To Get It Today – In addition to buy online pick up in-store, customers in select markets can also take advantage of having items delivered directly to their home or office the same day through mygofer.com.

About Sears Holdings Corporation

Sears Holdings Corporation (Nasdaq: SHLD) is the nation's fourth largest broadline retailer, with approximately 3,900 full-line and specialty retail stores in the United States and Canada. Sears Holdings is the leading home appliance retailer as well as a leader in tools, lawn and garden, consumer electronics and automotive repair and maintenance. Sears Holdings is the 2010 ENERGY STAR® Retail Partner of the Year. Key proprietary brands include Kenmore, Craftsman and DieHard, and a broad apparel offering, including such well-known labels as Lands' End, Jaclyn Smith and Joe Boxer, as well as the Apostrophe and Covington brands. It also has the Country Living collection, which is offered by Sears and Kmart. We are the nation's largest provider of home services, with more than 12 million service calls made annually. Sears Holdings Corporation operates through its subsidiaries, including Sears, Roebuck and Co. and Kmart Corporation. For more information, visit Sears Holdings' website at www.searsholdings.com.

*The Experian Hitwise data is based on rankings from a custom category of Department / Multi-Channel stores. Ranking includes combined sears.com and kmart.com traffic numbers, but does not include other Sears Holdings Web sites. Ranking does not include Amazon.com.  The market share of visits ranking, which is the percentage of online traffic to the Web site or industry, is for the week ending November 27, 2010 from the Experian Hitwise sample of 10 million Internet users in the United States.

**The Gomez Retail UX (User Experience) Index offers a view into the aggregate performance of major Web and mobile applications that also predicts online shoppers' satisfaction or frustration during a critical shopping period – Black Friday through Cyber Monday. Based on the Apdex scoring methodology for Web performance, which provides a way of estimating user satisfaction or frustration, the UX Index indicators measured the current performance of aggregated Web and mobile sites vs. the baseline. It provided an hourly score based on the aggregate Web and mobile performance of the Top 15 U.S. retail websites, the Top 15 U.S. mobile sites and the Internet Retailer Top 500 U.S. Web retailers.

SOURCE Sears Holdings Corporation