Expectations for consumer spending this Christmas in Australia are moderate, despite consumer confidence sitting at 38.3 percent above its level a year ago (Westpac Melbourne Institute Consumer Sentiment Index).

Below is a breakdown of visits to Shopping and Classifieds websites by product category.

Given that retailers will be vying for consumer spend not just against immediate competitors, but against retailers in other verticals, Hitwise Senior Analyst Sandra Hanchard takes a look at the types of products that are attracting consumer interest.

To read the full article, please visit Experian Hitwise Weblogs.

By using Hitwise Clickstream reports, you can prioritise content to add to your website by analysing downstream traffic from your website and highlighting content your consumers are looking for - but may not be finding on your website. Furthermore, you can identify affiliate partners that are working for competitors that might also be good sources of traffic to your website.

For example, Net Xpress (www.netxpress.biz) is attempting to identify affiliate partners that work for their competitor Officeworks Business Direct (www.officeworks.com.au). Through utilising Hitwise Clickstream reports, Net Xpress will see the top ten sources of traffic to Officeworks Business Direct for the week ending 14/11/2009 included: Google Australia (www.google.com.au), Google (www.google.com), eBay Australia (www.ebay.com.au), Facebook (www.facebook.com) and GetPrice (www.getprice.com.au). Net Xpress can use this for comparison purposes to evaluate their success at attracting visits from search engines, social networking and price comparison websites. This insight is invaluable for gaining a competitive edge over your direct competitors.

To learn more view the Hitwise Clickstream Fact Sheet.

For Hitwise clients who would like to discuss this product further, please contact your Account Manager or Hitwise Customer Support at csm.ap@hitwise.com or 1800 816 997.

Tuesday, 1 December, 2009, 1pm EDST (Melbourne)

Consumers are increasingly using the Internet to research products for both online and in-store purchases. Major retailers have begun to recognise the imperative of having a strong online presence to increase overall revenues, as well as to strengthen brand awareness. As the online retail space becomes more and more crowded leading up to Christmas, retailers will need to implement a variety of tactics to compete for customers.

This webinar aims to help retailers leverage online as an acquisition channel, and will cover the following:

• Who are the leading retail players and what are the best practices for attracting and retaining customers?
• How has the economic environment affected discretionary spend and which retail verticals are likely to thrive?
• What are the different benefits of search engine marketing vs. social media campaigns in the retail space?
• How can retailers deepen their understanding of target customers using online behavioural data?

Register for the Christmas 2009 Retail webinar.

Using Hitwise Lifestyle, a leading online customer segmentation and targeting tool which incorporates Mosaic Australia, you can ascertain who your potential target audience is, by identifying the Mosaic Australia Types that are more likely to visit your online industry.

For example, the top Mosaic Australia Type to visit the Shopping and Classified - Appliances and Electronics industry was 'Home Entertainment', which contributed 4.47% of traffic to this industry (for the 12 rolling weeks ending 14/11/2009).

'Home Entertainment' consists of people of a late baby boomer age profile, who generally hold blue-collar occupations, coupled with clerical, administrative and sales roles. They reside in the outer suburban and provincial neighbourhoods, located at some distance from major shopping centres, but with reasonable access to regional and neighbourhood facilities. Their household incomes are relatively high, but reasonable rent and mortgage costs mean a sufficient surplus is available for 'Home Entertainment' to enjoy a good standard of living. Spending priorities are directed towards the convenience of frozen meals and fast food, an investment in lifestyle through AV equipment, household appliances, or furnishings, and the indulgences of alcohol and tobacco. They love to shop and watch sport, but have little time for cultural activities. They also enjoy both commercial and pay TV, commercial radio, and looking for internet bargains on the classified advertising and online auction sites.

To learn more view the Hitwise Lifestyle Fact Sheet.

For Hitwise clients who would like to discuss this product further, please contact your Account Manager or Hitwise Customer Support at csm.ap@hitwise.com or 1800 816 997.

Retailers will need to implement a variety of tactics this Christmas to compete in an increasingly crowded online space.

To gain a competitive advantage, retailers can use Demographics and Search data to deepen their understanding of their target customer. In this second report of a 4-part retail Christmas series by Experian Hitwise, we review the shopping preferences of 18-24 year old consumers, as demonstrated by their search behaviour.

Top-level findings included:

• Bricks and Mortar searches are much more dominant than online brands amongst 18-24 year olds. Both females and males were more likely to search for Bricks and Mortar brands, accounting for 73% and 70% of searches respectively.
• 18-24 year old females are more brand-conscious than 18-24 year old males. 85% of top shopping searches by females were for brand names only, compared to 82% for males.
• 18-24 males are more product-oriented in their searches. Product terms accounted for 16% of searches by males compared to 12% for females.

In this study, we also found key differences in the retail categories searched for by 18-24 year old female and male users. Female shoppers, furthermore displayed greater price-sensitivity, with a stronger tendency to search on terms related to Comparison Shopping, Rewards and Discount categories.

For more retail insights, download the Experian Hitwise Christmas Retail Series Report.

The following report lists the most popular terms typed into a search engine over the 4 rolling weeks ending 21/11/2009 that resulted in traffic to websites classified by Hitwise within the 'Business and Finance - Property' industry. For example, the most popular search term was 'real estate' representing 4.57% of all search terms that delivered users to websites classified by Hitwise in the 'Business and Finance - Property' industry.

With Tiger Woods visiting Australia to compete in the Australian Masters, it is no surprise that public interest in golf has piqued online.

The Professional Golfers Association of Australia (www.pga.org.au) was one of the fastest moving websites for the week ending 14/11/2009, moving 95 places to rank 48 in the Hitwise Sport industry.

Interestingly, for the week ending 14/11/2009, 55% of visitors to The Professional Golfers Association of Australia were new visitors (based on rolling 30 day period) and 99% of the traffic delivered to the website was organic (4 weeks ending 14/11/2009).