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Jannie Cahill
Marketing Director, Hitwise
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Hitwise UK online retail update
High street retailers winning online shopping battle
London, UK, 6 August 2008 - Hitwise, the leading online competitive intelligence service, today reveals that high street retailers are pulling ahead of their online only counterparts when it comes to online shopping in the UK. According to a new report “Can Retailers Have a Happy Christmas During the Credit Crunch?”, the Internet properties of the 100 largest online high street retailers in the UK, such as Argos, Next, and Marks and Spencer, received 19.3% more UK Internet visits during July 2008 than the 100 largest online only retailers, such as Amazon, Play.com and ASOS.
“High street retailers overtook their online only counterparts for the first time during December 2006, but quickly fell behind again for most of 2007,” commented Robin Goad, Research Director for Hitwise UK. “However, when the high street overtook again last Christmas, the gap was even greater than before and during 2008 the online only retailers only managed to edge ahead during February. Given the 2.6% year-on-year decline in actual physical visits to retailers reported by Experian Footfall for July, it looks like high street retailers will be more reliant than ever on their online operations this Christmas.”
Fashion retailers weathering the credit crunch online
Over the last 12 months, fashion has been the fastest growing area of online retail in the UK. In July 2008 UK Internet visits to Hitwise’s Apparel and Accessories category accounted for 1 in every 10 visits to online retail websites, with the sector having experienced an annual growth rate of 34.2% since July 2007. Online fashion retail in the UK is dominated by the major high street brands, which accounted for seven of the top ten websites in the category during June.
“The growth of the online fashion industry has been one of the main contributors to the increasing market share of high street retailers online,” commented Robin Goad. “However, there are exceptions to the rule. ASOS was the second most visited website in our Shopping and Classifieds – Apparel and Accessories category in July 2008. UK Internet traffic to online-only fashion retailers has more than doubled over the last 12 months.”
In addition to major high street brands such as Next, Top Shop and River Island, the top 10 online fashion retailers in June also included two other remote shopping specialists, M and M Direct and Boden.
Market share of UK Internet visits to the top 10 Shopping and Classifieds – Apparel and Accessories retailers, July 2008.
*Note: High street and online only retail categories include the top 100 retail websites in each category, but exclude websites included in Hitwise’s Auctions or Rewards and Directories categories.
About Hitwise:
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, or to receive a copy of the report Can Retailers Have a Happy Christmas During the Credit Crunch?, please contact Jannie Cahill, jannie.cahill@hitwise.com, +44 20 7378 3619.