Social Networks to Overtake Search Engines?
Based on weekly data, Experian Hitwise revealed that for the first time New Zealand Internet user visits to the Social Networks and Forums industry surpassed visits to the Search Engines industry (week ending 5/12/2009). Social Networks and Forums experienced a year-on-year growth of 33.55% (comparing November 2008 to November 2009 across All Categories), in contrast to the Search Engines industry which grew 2.97% over the same period.

Facebook Dominates Social Networks
Facebook continues to be the leading Social Networking and Forums website in New Zealand followed by YouTube (www.youtube.com), Bebo (www.bebo.com), and Twitter (www.twitter.com) (November 2009). Market share of visits to Facebook (www.facebook.com) have increased by 96.53% year-on-year comparing November 2008 and 2009.

Facebook vs. Google New Zealand
While Google New Zealand (www.google.co.nz) continues to be the most popular website visited by New Zealand Internet users with a market share of 7.99% in All Categories, Facebook (www.facebook.com) is creeping close behind ranking second with a market share of 5.79% (November 2009).

For more insights on Social Networks visit the Experian Hitwise Weblogs.

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 New Zealand profile of your competitors in order to understand their existing and potential online strengths.

For example, if you are a music retailer looking to increase your customer base and your competitor is JB Hi-Fi, using the Lifestyle Similarity report, you will discover that the top five websites that have the 'best fit' audience profiles to JB Hi-Fi New Zealand (www.jbhifi.co.nz), are: Skycity Cinemas (www.villageskycity.co.nz), ASB FastNet Classic (www.fastnet.co.nz), ASB Bank - Personal Banking (www.asbbank.co.nz), Parallel Imported (www.parallelimported.co.nz) and Expert Infotech (www.einfo.co.nz) (12 weeks ending 5 December 2009). Using this information, you can determine if Skycity Cinemas offers content syndication opportunities for your website.

You can also use Lifestyle reports to reveal competitors that have a strong overlap with your audience profile. For example, PB Technologies (www.pbtech.co.nz) has an online audience profile similar to JB Hi-Fi. These insights are invaluable for gaining a competitive edge over your direct competitors.

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 0800 448 947.

The following report lists the most popular terms typed into a search engine over the 12 weeks ending 05/12/2009 that resulted in traffic to websites classified by Experian Hitwise within the 'Lifestyle - Womens Sites' industry. For example, the most popular search term was 'oprah' representing 0.68% of all search terms that delivered users to websites classified by Experian Hitwise in the 'Lifestyle - Womens Sites' industry.

Using Hitwise Lifestyle, a leading online customer segmentation and targeting tool which incorporates Mosaic New Zealand, you can identify the most popular websites in an industry that attract a specific segment. For example, the top three websites in the Health Insurance category that attracted the largest volume of females aged 25-34 in the Mosaic New Zealand Type 'Ambitious Entrepreneurs' segment were Southern Cross Healthcare (www.southerncross.co.nz) Bupa (www.bupa.co.uk) and Guild Insurance and Financial Services (www.guildifs.com.au), for the four weeks ending 05/12/2009.

The 'Ambitious Entrepreneurs' Type are career-minded, mobile singles and couples living in exclusive inner urban suburbs. Many have degrees or vocational qualifications, and tend to be managers and professionals in the finance, insurance and other professional careers. A high percentage are connected to the Internet using it mainly for online shopping, phone calls, sport telecasts, entertainment and share trading, they are also heavy readers of newspapers and magazines. With their busy lifestyles they often buy takeaways to eat at home of the more healthy varieties, and frequent cafes during weekends and business lunchtimes. When they go out, it is often to a pub or nightclub, where wine and imported beers are consumed. Watching movies, both at the theatre and on DVD is popular, as is attending live music concerts. Skiing, yoga and going to the gym are regular activities, as are winter sports and tennis.

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 0800 448 947.

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

With all the media surrounding Tiger Woods in the past couple of weeks, it is no surprise that traffic to his website www.tigerwoods.com surged; leaping 140 spots to rank 12th in the Entertainment - Personalities industry (week ending 05/12/2009).

As we too frequently say nowadays, all publicity is good publicity, especially in the case of Tiger, whose website not only increased its market share 30-times, but attracted 90.5% of new visitors in the Entertainment -Personalities industry, for the week ending 05/12/2009. Interestingly, the average visit time to the website was only 4 minutes and 28 seconds, a drop of over 13 minutes from the previous week.

The TigerWoods.com Store (tigerwoods.shop.sportstoday.com) and Tiger Woods Foundation (www.tigerwoodsfoundation.org) featured within the top 10 downstream websites visited after the Tiger Woods website (3rd and 9th respectively).