| Industry Peaks and Leading Products Online for Holiday Shopping |
Each year during the holiday shopping period, common patterns of consumer behaviour online may be observed that marketers have the opportunity to leverage for better planning. Hitwise tracks between 17 and 21 sub-categories under the Shopping & Classifieds parent category in Asia Pacific markets, ranging from Apparel & Accessories to Wholesale & Relationship Sales.
During the holiday shopping period last year, visits began to ramp up from mid-October to spike the week ending 25 November 2006 - the overall peak week for Shopping & Classifieds online in 2006. Shoppers who left their Christmas shopping a bit later peaked in visits around the week ending 16 December 2006, with a surge in traffic from procrastinators and post-Christmas day bargain hunters for the week ending 30 December 2006.
An analysis of the product categories that grew during each time point showed that:
- Appliances & Electronics, Books, Department Stores, Flowers & Gifts, Grocery & Alcohol and Video & Games achieved significant growth rates for all three time points.
- Music, House & Garden and Sport & Fitness attracted last minute shoppers.
- Flowers & Gifts had the highest growth rate, with 55%, week ending 16 December 2006.
- Grocery & Alcohol spiked by 38%, week ending 16 December 2006, corresponding to the highest volume in searches for 'hampers' in 2006.
Based on what we've seen in 2006, Hitwise predicts that:
- Visits to Department Stores will increase throughout December 2007, but will peak late in the month as users browse online but purchase in-store just prior to Christmas day.
- Music and Video & Games will peak late December as users have the option of buying gift cards from online services such as iTunes, or bricks and mortar stores such as JB Hi-Fi.
- Books will remain a popular industry throughout the whole holiday shopping period.
- Finally, to throw in a wild-card, House & Garden websites are likely to become an important source of gift ideas this year, having maintained their momentum in 2007 since Christmas 2006.
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| Search Terms - Industry Search Terms Report for Business and Finance - Insurance |
The following report lists the most popular terms typed into a search engine over the 4 weeks ending 24 November 2007 that resulted in traffic to websites classified by Hitwise within the 'Business and Finance - Insurance' industry. For example, the most popular search term was 'nrma' representing 2.72% of all search terms that delivered users to websites classified by Hitwise in the 'Business and Finance - Insurance' industry.
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| 1. |
nrma |
2.72% |
| 2. |
racq |
2.55% |
| 3. |
racv |
2.37% |
| 4. |
aami |
2.27% |
| 5. |
travel insurance |
2.12% |
| 6. |
car insurance |
2.01% |
| 7. |
medibank private |
1.96% |
| 8. |
mbf |
1.56% |
| 9. |
nib |
1.05% |
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| Hertz Australia - www.hertz.com.au |
For the week ending 24 November 2007, Hertz Australia (www.hertz.com.au) increased its market share of visits by 72 places, moving up from a weekly rank of 125 on 3 November 2007 to become the 53rd most popular Automotive website visited by Australians.
Google (www.google.com.au) was the top website to refer traffic for the week ending 24 November 2007, accounting for 18.13%. After visiting Hertz (www.hertz.com.au), Internet users went to Avis Rent A Car (www.avis.com) and Google Australia (www.google.com.au), accounting for 9.82% and 5.16% of downstream traffic respectively.
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| Choose Your Web Directory Wisely |
Recently, it appears that Google has "de-valued" a number of popular web directories, and completely banned others. Web directories such as Yahoo! directory, DMOZ.org, and business.com have long been a useful way to promote a business, gain traffic, and improve incoming links to a website.
In Google's latest PageRank update many directories suffered significant drop in PageRank value. For websites that rely heavily on directories for links, this could have adverse effects on their exposure in Google organic results.
The example below shows that Elegant Directory (www.elegantdirectory.com) no longer appears in Google organic results for their brand term.
Google has not de-valued all directories, but has singled out a few specific web directories in this latest update. Sphinn.com estimates that over 60 individual web directories have been targeted.
This update highlights a number of key points of SEO.
1. Diversify - The landscape of the Internet is constantly changing, and websites that rely too heavily on one source of visitors may quickly find themselves left out.
2. Choose web directories carefully - Ensure that you are only submitting your website to quality directories with a good reputation and history in search engines.
As a general guide, quality web directories will go through an editorial review process where web directory editors will evaluate the website links and submission copy to determine if the website is appropriate for the web directory.
There are many factors a business should consider before submitting a website to a web directory. Hitwise Search Marketing Services is able to research and advise on quality web directories for a specific business to request inclusion into.
If you would like a complimentary analysis of the effectiveness of your website's search optimisation, contact Hitwise Search Marketing Services.
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