HITWISE UK  CHRISTMAS SHOPPING UPDATE #5

Retail round-up: online retail enjoyed a stellar month

London, 20^th December 2005
Retail websites in the UK enjoyed an unprecedented level of visits in December 2005 when the sector reached a new peak of 14.85% market share for the week ending 10^th December, a 14% increase in visits year-on-year. Whilst visits to retail sites fell back to 14.14% for the week ending 17^th December, Hitwise - the leader in online competitive intelligence - reports that traffic to the retail sector was still up by 16% compared with the same week in 2004.

Comparing the weeks ending 10^th December 2005 and 17^th December 2005, market share of visits to Flowers and Gifts websites increased 5%, visits to Grocery and Alcohol grew 6%, and visits to Intimate Apparel and Accessories grew 8%.

“UK consumers are taking advantage of later delivery dates to do more last minute shopping online, with visits to grocery, gift and lingerie sites continuing to increase last week”, said Heather Hopkins, Director of Research for Hitwise UK. “While iPods, digital cameras, and Sony’s PSP continued to be the most popular gift items, searches for ‘barbie’ increased 27% week-on-week and hair straighteners brand ‘ghd’ took the #6 spot among the most searched-for product searches.”

Seasonality of online retail to continue in 2006

In 2006, Hitwise expects the UK online retail sector to follow a similar seasonal pattern to previous years. Visits will spike in the week after Christmas for the January sales and again in February for Valentine’s day (see chart below). In the Spring, we will see visits rise again as UK consumers shop for Mother’s Day gifts and spring home improvement projects.

Key trends from Christmas 2005:

Last Minute Rush

Christmas 2005 bore witness to an interesting trend for online Christmas shopping with UK shoppers appearing to leave more of their shopping to the last minute. While visits to retail websites peaked the week ending 4th December 2004, visits peaked the following week this year – the week ending 10^th December 2005 – which saw the sector reach its highest peak to date.

eBay UKcontinued growth

eBay UK continues to be the second most visited site on the internet and accounted for one-third of visits to retail websites for the week ending 17^th December 2005. The market share of visits to the site increased 37% year-on-year for the week ending 3^rd December 2005, the week eBay achieved its highest market share of all categories over the past 15 months.

While February through to May have traditionally been the strongest months for eBay, the site’s share of visits in the lead-up to Christmas surpassed those for the rest of 2005.

Pure-Play Internet Retailers Continue to Dominate

As with 2004, pure-play internet retailers attracted the largest share of visits among retail websites in the lead-up to Christmas with Argos the only high street brand among the top 5 retail websites in the week ending 10th December 2005. eBay UK, Amazon UK, Argos, Play.com, and Kelkoo UK were the most visited retail websites in this week, accounting for 42% of visits to retail websites. These five sites were top ranked in the same week in 2004, highlighting their continuing strength. 

Google Accounted for 53% More Visits to Retail Websites

Visits from search continues to be critical to online retailers, and websites in the Hitwise Search Engines and Directories category accounted for 30% of visits to retail websites in the week ending 10th December 2005. Google UK accounted for 20% of visits to retail websites, up 53% over the same week last year. Google’s strength has been growing as it continues to capture a larger share of the search market. The Google toolbar, additional popular vertical search services, and the practice of redirecting UK internet users to Google UK from Google.com contributed to this stellar growth rate.

Sign Up For the Hitwise Analyst Weblog

In addition to the UK Christmas Shopping Series 2005 weekly instalments, Heather Hopkins will provide further retail analyses via her weblog at http://weblogs.hitwise.com/heather-hopkins/.

Top 20 Shopping & Classifieds websites rank by UKvisits, week ending 17^th December 2005

* Does not include stand-alone visits to other eBay sites (eBay.com, eBay Motors, My eBay)
** Does not include stand-alone visits to other Tesco sites (Tesco Register, Tesco Superstore, Tesco Electrical)

About Hitwise

Hitwise is the leading online competitive intelligence service. Each day, Hitwise monitors how more than 25 million Internet users interact with over 500,000 websites across 160 industry categories.

By monitoring more people, more websites, more often, Hitwise provides marketers with timely and actionable marketing insights on how their online presence compares to competitive websites.  Companies use this information to maximize the return on their online investment, in efforts such as affiliate programs, search marketing, online advertising, content development and lead generation.

Hitwise collects Internet usage information via a combination of ISP data partnerships and opt-in panels, and complies with local and international privacy legislation as audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Founded in 1997, Hitwise is a privately held company, headquartered in New York City and operates in the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore. 

More information about the Hitwise Competitive Intelligence service is available at www.hitwise.com.

For up to date analysis on online trends, please visit the Hitwise Intelligence-Analyst Weblogs at weblogs.hitwise.com.

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Jannie Cahill
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