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HITWISE UK RETAIL UPDATE
Best Ever Year for Online Retail
London, 6th January 2005, Hitwise, the world’s leading online competitive intelligence service, today reports that the 2004 Christmas season saw the strongest ever performance for the Internet retail sector in the UK, with online retailers experiencing a 23% increase in traffic from December 2003.
Hitwise monthly data for December 2003 to December 2004 shows that the sector experienced a period of particularly healthy growth between August and December 2004, with market share of all UK Internet traffic directed at online shopping websites, increasing from just over 10% in August to more than 12% in the final month of the year.
The highest performing week during December was the week ending December 4th. The first week of the month saw market share of online traffic to retail sites surpass 13% as online shoppers sought to beat the Christmas crowds and avoid the last-minute pre-holiday rush by searching for the best deals and making gift purchases online.
The top 20 UK online retail websites for the month of December included eBay (www.ebay.co.uk), Amazon (www.amazon.co.uk), Kelkoo (uk.kelkoo.com) and Argos (www.argos.co.uk), as well as the websites of several major high street computer and electronics chains: Currys, Comet and PC World all performed strongly throughout the pre-Christmas period.
A popular gift this Christmas was clearly the portable MP3 player, with the iPod and its various imitators flying out of stores around the UK in December. Subsequently, both Apple’s iTunes (www.apple.com/itunes) and the newly re-launched Napster MP3 download site (www.napster.co.uk) saw a massive peak in traffic on Christmas day. The 25th of December saw both sites increase their market share amongst all sites tracked by Hitwise by more than 500% and 150% respectively since December 23rd, as users rushed online to download music for their new gadgets.
Monthly performance of visits to retail sites, December 2003 - December 2004 
Weekly performance of visits to retail sites, week ending 4th December to 25th December 2004
Performance of visits to iTunes and Napster, December 2004
Most visited UK retail websites, December 2004 
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