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Jannie Cahill
Marketing Director, Hitwise
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HIGH STREET RETAILERS WINNING THE ONLINE SHOPPING BATTLE
London, UK, 8 December 2008 – Hitwise, the leading online competitive intelligence service and an Experian company, today reveals that more shoppers than ever are abandoning the high street for the Internet this Christmas, with many of the fastest growing retailers online familiar high street names.
During November, the top 100 high street retailer websites received 22% more UK Internet visits than the top 100 online only retailers. The most recent IMRG-Hitwise Hot Shops List, which ranked the top 50 UK e-retailers in October, included 30 high street names.
“With a few notable exceptions, high street retailers are pulling ahead of their online rivals when it comes to Internet shopping. Partly this is a result of their brand strength - consumers are obviously looking for cheaper prices in the current climate - but they are also turning to trusted brands that offer value for money in these uncertain times,” commented Robin Goad, Director of Research for Hitwise. “However, multi-channel retailers also provide more options for shoppers, and we expect that gap between the high street and online only retailers to widen during the key pre- and post-Christmas weeks as a result.”
IMRG Hitwise Hot Shops List, November 2008: Top 10 Online and High Street retailers
The IMRG-Hitwise Hot Shops List of the top 50 UK e-retailers* is the key indicator of online merchant performance. The List is published quarterly and tracks popularity, as indicated by visits, of those selling goods and services within the IMRG Capgemini Index Classification**. This List is based on October 2008 data.
UK Internet traffic to High Street and Online Only Retailers, November 07 – November 08
During November 2008 online retailers received 5.47% of their UK Internet traffic from social networking sites, such as Facebook, YouTube and Bebo, and 3.87% from online webmail services, such as Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail and Gmail. This reflects a significant shift in sources of traffic for online retailers over the 12 months: in November 2007 4.9% of their traffic came from Email Services and 4.3% from social networks.
Within the online retail marketplace, the biggest beneficiaries of traffic from social networks are fashion retailers. Three of the top 10 retail websites receiving traffic from social networks during November – ASOS, Top Shop and River Island - were fashion retailers. 15.2% of ASOS’s visitors during November came from a social network, with Facebook, Bebo and MySpace all amongst the top 10 referrers of traffic to the site.
“Fashion is currently the fastest growing retail sector online, and it now accounts for over 10% of all UK ecommerce traffic,” commented Robin Goad, Director of Research for Hitwise. “One of the key factors in this success has been the way that online fashion retailers have built user communities on social networking sites.”
Hitwise is the leading online competitive intelligence service. Only Hitwise provides its 1,500 clients around the world with daily insights on how their customers interact with a broad range of competitive websites, and how their competitors use different tactics to attract online customers.
Since 1997, Hitwise has pioneered a unique, network-based approach to Internet measurement. Through relationships with ISPs around the world, Hitwise's patented methodology anonymously captures the online usage, search and conversion behaviour of 25 million Internet users. This unprecedented volume of Internet usage data is seamlessly integrated into an easy to use, web-based service, designed to help marketers better plan, implement and report on a range of online marketing programs.
Hitwise, a subsidiary of Experian (FTS: EXPN) www.experiangroup.com operates in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore. More information about Hitwise is available at www.hitwise.com.
For up-to-date-analysis of online trends, please visit the Hitwise Intelligence-Analyst Weblogs at http://weblogs.hitwise.com and the Hitwise Data Center at www.hitwise.com/datacenter.
For media enquiries, please contact:
Jannie Cahill
+44 20 7378 3619