Department Store Visits Surge Online - DealsDirect.com.au strengthens position ahead of Amazon UK

Visits to Shopping and Classifieds - Department Stores online have spiked leading up to Christmas, increasing by 12% for the week ending December 3, 2005, and accounting for 0.4% of all Internet visits. This was an increase of 15.2% on the same time last year, and represents the highest online traffic volume in 18 months.

A significant driver of growth to the category was visits to DealsDirect.com.au, which spiked by 62.8% for the week ending December 3, 2005. DealsDirect.com.au offers bargain shopping on a wide range of products from automotive and tools to toys, games, gifts and watches. The Australian website increased its position to be the second most popular online Department store, behind only Amazon.com.

DealsDirect.com.au succeeded however in overtaking Amazon UK (www.amazon.co.uk) for the first time, perhaps indicating a desire by Australian Internet users to shop at local online properties. Visits to local websites in Shopping and Classifieds - Department Stores were up 25.9% compared to the same week last year.

Kmart Australia (www.kmart.com.au) also contributed to growth in the Department Stores online industry for the week ending December 3, jumping from 6th to 4th position and has steadily increased its market share by 25.5% since the start of October. However, traditional retailers in Australia still have some way to go before they become a significant presence in the Internet shopping landscape, demonstrated by the top 3 online department stores which are all pure players. Recent online US trends show that bricks and mortar stores are fighting back, with Hitwise observing Walmart.com surpass Amazon.com in market share of visits for the first time during Thanksgiving.

Search term analysis from Hitwise indicate that 'mp3 players', 'mobile phones' and 'exercise equipment' were amongst the Top 10 search terms that resulted in successful visits to DealsDirect.com.au for the 12 weeks ending December 3, 2005.

Fast Mover - OzJet

www.ozjet.com.au


Position week ending November 5: 3,925
Position week ending December 3: 587
Positions jumped: 3,338

OzJet is a new business class airline flying between Melbourne and Sydney. Its inaugural flight was on November 29, 2005 and this corresponded with its highest ranking of 292. In the Commercial Airlines sub-category, the site rose from 12 to 4 in the nominated period to be placed behind Qantas, Virgin Blue and Jetstar and in the Travel category, the site rose from 321 to 43.

OzJet has been widely mentioned in the media of late, which is demonstrated by 9.99% of its website traffic coming from News and Media websites for the month of November, 2005. This was 5.87% above the average traffic received from News and Media websites (4.12%) by the Aviation - Commercial Airlines industry. The Sydney Morning Herald was the top News and Media upstream site followed by The Age with the Herald Sun weighing in at number 4.

OzJet's brand recognition is illustrated by the popularity of brand-related search terms typed into search engines over the 12 weeks ending December 3, 2005 that resulted in traffic to the OzJet website. The most popular search term was 'ozjet' representing 60.41% of all search terms that delivered users to the OzJet website with the next four search terms also being variations of 'ozjet'.

The following report lists the most popular terms typed into a search engine over the 12 weeks ending 10/12/2005 that resulted in traffic to websites classified by Hitwise within the Shopping and Classifieds industry.

For example, the most popular search term was 'ebay' representing 3.77% of all search terms that delivered users to websites classified by Hitwise in the Shopping and Classifieds industry.

Category Spotlight: Entertainment - Books and Writing

The websites of authors as well as sites featuring book reviews and general literary information. (note: book publishers appear predominantly in Business and Finance - Book Publishers - they are listed here if the site has a major literary consumer focus). The data below is based on All sites » Weekly rankings for the week ending 10/12/2005 » Ranks by 'Visits'.

Top 10 Entertainment - Books and Writing sites for Australian audiences		Local Competitiveness Index
FanFiction.Net Harry Potter The Crime Library Harry Potter Automatic News Aggregator (HPANA) ThinkExist Love Poem and Quotes Suite101.com The Leaky Cauldron Bartleby.com FictionPress.net		8.2% of traffic to this category was directed at domestic sites.

Media queries at Hitwise

If you are interested in using Hitwise content and statistics in publications and presentations, we encourage you to do so. Please source the content as "Hitwise Australia - www.hitwise.com.au".

Additionally - if you require assistance with statistics or content, please feel free to contact James Borg at james.borg@hitwise.com.

About this Newsletter

This monthly email Newsletter is designed to provide Hitwise subscribers with analysis of new developments, industry trends and competitive activity. The powerful real-time web intelligence capabilities of Hitwise and a continual flow of additional research findings make this an indispensable business resource.

You have received the Hitwise newsletter because you subscribed to our services, or a friend sent it to you. To unsubscribe from the Hitwise newsletter please click here.

Hitwise is strongly committed to your privacy rights and does not sell or give its list to third parties. To view the Hitwise Privacy Policy please click here.

Brought to you by the team at Hitwise Australia - www.hitwise.com.au.

Copyright Hitwise Pty Ltd, December 2005