Recently, Alan Long, Hitwise Research Director spoke at Search Engine Room in Sydney and presented information and trends about how the Australian Internet user's interactions with Search Engines are changing.

There has been a global trend in the lengthening of search terms. The below chart compares the week ending 14 November with the corresponding week in the previous three years and highlights a single year (year-on-year) decrease in one word search terms of 2.3% and two word search terms of 1.9%.

In contrast search requests longer than three words have increased over the past 12 months by 2.8%, returning to the levels of 2006 and 2007. Four word searches have increased 1.2% and 5-words plus searches have seen a solid increase over the past two years, with a 1.2% increase in the past 12 months.

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

Inventory control is a key challenge for retailers during the busy Christmas period. By monitoring which retail verticals consumers visit online, retailers can keep track of consumer demand to ensure they won't be caught short on stock levels.

In this third report of a 4-part Experian Hitwise Retail Christmas series, we look at the product categories that are attracting strong year on year growth leading up to Christmas.

This year we found in Australia that the Apparel and Accessories category has attracted the highest year-on-year growth in visits of 18.2%. Strong performance in the Apparel and Accessories industry has been underscored by significant investment in the online channel by key vendors. Apparel retailers have increasingly recognised the need to maintain a strong web presence to strengthen their brand awareness and increase revenue both online and offline, and provide a leading example to retailers in other sectors.

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

Increase the speed

Did you know that if your website takes more than 2 seconds to load you could potentially be losing up to 18% of your customers to a competitor? Ensuring that your site is fast should be the number one concern for anyone in online business. If you sell Advertising Impressions, having a fast website can dramatically increase the number of pages per visit - a recent study found that page load time was inversely proportional to the number of pages viewed.

Follow the '3-Click' Rule

Users don't like to be bombarded with too much information or spend too much time clicking around to find more information about a product or service. Try to follow the '3-Click Rule' which states that "access to any feature of an application, or each logical step in a process, should require no more than three clicks".

Simplify your Shopping Cart

Once a customer adds a product to the shopping cart you can be pretty certain there's a high level of commitment to purchase. One tactic used by online retailers which forces users to add products and click through to their shopping carts, is displaying the special price only on the 'cart' page. Once a user is in the shopping cart it is important to remove all distractions, this includes removing your navigation, advertising, up-sells. The aim is to get that customer to finish their purchase in the most efficient way possible.

If you need help increasing your conversion rate, Experian Hitwise Search Marketing has vast experience in helping retailers increase their bottom line by maximising conversion. For more information please email search.csm@hitwise.com or call 1800 816 997.

Using Hitwise Lifestyle reports allow you to grow visits from target customers by partnering with more websites that attract visitors who closely match your website's audience profile. You can also view websites that match the Mosaic Australia profile of your competitors in order to understand their existing and potential online strengths.

For example, if you are a retailer looking to increase your customer base and your competitor is Harvey Norman, using the Lifestyle Similarity report, you will discover that the top five websites that have the 'best fit' audience profiles to Harvey Norman - Australia (www.harveynorman.com.au) were: Google Australia (www.google.com.au), Apple iPods & iTunes (www.apple.com/itunes), Hotfrog (www.hotfrog.com.au), GetPrice (www.getprice.com.au) and eHow (www.ehow.com) (12 weeks ending 05/12/2009). Using this information, you can determine if GetPrice offers content syndication opportunities for your website.

To learn more view the Hitwise Lifestyle Fact Sheet.

To discuss this product further, please contact your Account Manager or Hitwise Customer Support at csm.ap@hitwise.com or 1800 816 997.

The following report lists the most popular terms typed into a search engine over the 4 rolling weeks ending 05/12/2009 that resulted in traffic to websites classified by Experian Hitwise within the 'News and Media' industry. For example, the most popular search term was 'bom' representing 2.17% of all search terms that delivered users to websites classified by Experian Hitwise in the 'News and Media' industry.

Using Hitwise Lifestyle, which incorporates Mosaic Australia, a leading household segmentation system, you can identify the most popular websites in an industry that attract a specific audience segment.

For example, Medibank Private (www.medibank.com.au), MBF Health Funds Australia (www.mbf.com.au) and Hospitals Contribution Fund of Australia (www.hcf.com.au) were the top three websites in the Health Insurance category that attracted the largest volume of females aged 25-34 in the Mosaic Australia Type 'Graduating Upwards' for the four weeks ending 05/12/2009.

The 'Graduating Upwards' Type are often newcomers to Australia and are primarily young couples, singles and group households. Individuals within this Type are usually highly qualified, with Bachelor and postgraduate degrees, and work as managers or in professional occupations, where they typically command high salaries and often have secondary incomes from share investment. They reside in affluent locations and the riverside, harbourside, bayside and beach environments are often integral to their living and recreational activities. Money is often spent on entertainment and experiences such as meals in restaurants and holidays overseas, but gambling is not a high priority. Socialising is key to their entertainment, with eating out at restaurants, takeaways and spending time at pubs and clubs rating high. They also like to keep up with news and events in the business world, frequently checking out business and financial websites and magazines.

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.

*Please note: Gender and Age data is based on head of household.

Danny Green (aka 'The Green Machine') was not only winning in the ring, after his amazing first round knock out of boxing legend Roy Jones jnr, but online with his official website, The Green Machine (www.dannygreen.com.au), punching through 470 places in a week, to rank 50th in the Sports industry (week ending 05/12/2009).

The Green Machine - the official website for Australian WBC World Champion boxer Danny Green, increased its market share 14-fold in the Sports industry for the same week.

Search terms driving traffic to the website were: 'danny green vs roy jones jnr', 'danny green' and 'danny green fight' (for the 4 weeks ending 05/12/2009).

'Family Challenge' were the most highly represented Lifestyle Mosaic Australia Group to visit the website (4 rolling weeks ending 05/12/2009). Family Challenge are one of the major family Groups, with nearly a third of residents comprising children from preschool through to high school age. Employment is predominantly in the construction and manufacturing industries, with the highest representation of machinery operators and trades people. Family Challenge live in the outer suburbs in medium-sized, separate housing, with the internet and television being the major forms of entertainment.