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HITWISE UK RETAIL UPDATE
January Sales Boost Online Retail Traffic by 20% Year on Year
London, 7th February 2005, Hitwise, the world’s leading online competitive intelligence service, today reports that the online retail sector has performed particularly strongly during the post-Christmas January sales period, experiencing a 20% increase in traffic year-on-year from January 2004 to January 2005.
Following on from a bumper Christmas season, the month of January proved to be a big one for online retailers, many of which followed the high street tradition of dramatic post-Christmas price-cuts. Although traffic was down overall from December 2004 – the biggest month for online retail each year – traffic for January 2005 exceeded 10% market share (10.6%), compared with 8.8% reached in January 2004.
Monthly performance of visits to retail sites, January 2004 – January 2005
One online sector that performed particularly strongly during January was fashion retail. As the prices of seasonal clothing and accessories were slashed during the sales, online retailers in the Hitwise Apparel & Accessories category experienced a boost in traffic. Figures for January 2005 were 12% higher than those for the same month in 2004.
In addition, the two top performers in the Apparel category – high street clothing chain Next (www.next.co.uk) and online celebrity fashion superstore ASOS (www.asos.com) – both increased their traffic considerably year-on-year from January 2004, by 18% and 28% respectively based on Hitwise monthly data for the Apparel & Accessories category. Hitwise Search Terms data also shows that Next’s winter sale was a winner in terms of search traffic, with ‘next sale’ featuring amongst the top 50 search terms used to find online shopping sites during January 2005.
Monthly performance of visits to Apparel and Accessories sites, January 2004 – January 2005
About Hitwise:
Hitwise is the world’s 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 search marketing, affiliate programs, online advertising, visitor segmentation, content development and lead generation.
Hitwise collects Internet usage information via a combination of ISP data partnerships and opt-in mega 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 Hitwise is available at www.hitwise.co.uk
For media enquiries, please contact:
Jannie Cahill
jannie.cahill@hitwise.com
Tel: 020 7378 3619