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HITWISE UK ONLINE UPDATE
Detox & GI Diets Prove Popular in UK, visits to Weight Watchers Website Double
London, 4th January 2006, With the indulgence and revelry of the holidays behind us, UK consumers turned to the web for advice on dieting and fitness. Analysis from Hitwise, the leading online competitive intelligence service, reveals that visits to diet and fitness sites attracted a larger share of visits yesterday than on any day in 2005.
“Visits to diet sites are following a predictable seasonal pattern” said Heather Hopkins, Director of Research for Hitwise UK. Typically, the first day back at work after New Year’s celebrations is the busiest day for consumers to search for information on dieting and fitness. Resolutions are made and people try to form good habits before they get back into their regular routines.
Market share of visits to websites in the Hitwise Health & Medical - Wellbeing category were up 6% yesterday compared with Tuesday 4th January 2005. Weight Watchers captured 31% market share of visits to the category, more than doubling the share of visits to the site compared with the previous day. While Weight Watchers UK was the most visited diet site throughout most of 2005, the site has gained significantly year-on-year, with a 69% increase in visits comparing 3rd of January 2006 and 4th January 2005.
The Boots ‘Change One Thing’ website, encouraging visitors to make and keep New Year’s Resolutions, leapt to a ranking of #7 based on visits to Health & Medical - Wellbeing websites on 2nd January and held that ranking yesterday.
Detox and GI Diet Prove Popular
Detox diets are proving popular, with ‘detox’ one of the top diet-related search terms in the week ending 31st December 2005. The volume of searches for ‘detox’ were slightly higher than those for ‘gi diet’ last week, with both terms receiving a 30% larger volume of searches compared with last year’s favourite ‘atkins diet’.
The massive seasonal surge in searches for diets and visits to diet sites is amusing and reassuring in that we know we are not alone in our short attention to New Year’s commitments, continued Hopkins. However, this illustrates a seasonal pattern that is insightful to online marketers, allowing them to fine tune search marketing campaigns to the weeks and days during which consumers are searching for products and services.
Diet sites attract women aged 25-44
While the Health & Medical - Wellbeing category receives a slightly larger percentage of visits from women under the age of 44 than average for the internet, several popular diet sites, including Weight Watchers UK and Slimming World, attract a much larger percentage of visits from women than average for internet sites.
A full 72% of visits to Weight Watchers were from female visitors in the four weeks ending 31st December 2005, 33% more than average for the internet. 66% of visits to Slimming World were from female visitors in that same period, 27% more than average for the internet.
These sites also attract a much larger share of visits from the age category 25-34, with nearly one third of Weight Watchers UK and Slimming World coming from that age segment, 25% more than average for the internet.
Weekly Market Share of Visits to www.weightwatchers.co.uk, July 2004 - January 2006 
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.co.uk.
For up to date analysis on online trends, please visit the Hitwise Intelligence-Analyst Weblogs at weblogs.hitwise.com.
For media enquiries, please contact:
Jannie Cahill
jannie.cahill@hitwise.com
Tel: 020 7378 3619