Social Networks provide marketers with the opportunity to engage consumers and harness the power of 'word of mouth' through open and authentic conversations around their brand. Marketers have been taken into unchartered waters where they do not control the communications, the tone or the content of the discussion on Social Networks.

The accelerated growth of the Social Networks over the past 12 months now make it imperative to understand different nuances of consumer behaviour, and the new marketing etiquette required to respond to these changes.

Top-level findings from this research include:

• Social Networking and Forums received 11.6% of all visits from New Zealand Internet users, the second lowest penetration rate amongst the countries monitored by Experian Hitwise.
• Social Networking and Forums are set to eclipse Search Engines and become the most visited industry for the first time in the coming months, most likely during the weeks immediately before or after Christmas.
• Facebook (www.facebook.com) has become the market maker for the Social Networking and Forums industry, more than doubling its share of visits in the past year. Currently the number two website in New Zealand, Facebook's growth puts it on a trajectory to overtake Google New Zealand (www.google.co.nz) as the most visited website by New Zealander Internet users.
• Twitter's (www.twitter.com) share of visits has grown over 19-fold in a year-on-year comparison, but has flattened since the week ending 12 September 2009. Recent announcements of integrating Twitter content in real time search results with both Google (www.google.com) and Bing (www.bing.com) will provide Twitter with greater exposure and most likely introduce new users, regenerating the growth pattern of past months.

Download this report and webinar recording for the latest Social Networking insights.

To coincide with the successful New Zealand launch of Hitwise Lifestyle our online segmentation and targeting tool, we are now also adding Age and Gender data to Hitwise Demographics.

With Hitwise Lifestyle and Demographics you can save valuable marketing spend by effectively identifying and targeting the right audience for your online and offline campaigns.

These new product features will allow you to:

• Profile the lifestyle characteristics for online audiences of over 40,000 websites and 165+ industries;
• View demographic profiles of visitors to any website or industry;
• Search for websites that attract a specific audience;
• Identify the strengths and weaknesses of your marketing campaigns by comparing the audience profiles between two websites or over two time periods; and
• Understand the media behaviour and attitudes of an audience group that visits a specific website.

Special New Year's Offer for new subscribers, who take up a Hitwise New Zealand subscription package including Lifestyle by 22 February 2010, will receive Demographics for FREE.

To take advantage of this offer or to learn more about Hitwise Lifestyle and Demographics please register your details or call 0800 448 947.

By using Hitwise Search Intelligence™ Paid and Organic Reports, you can identify which search terms competitors are focusing on for their Pay Per Click (PPC) and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategies.

For example, if one of your competitors is Jet Abroad - NZ (www.jetabroad.co.nz), you can discover that of all of the search traffic to their website, 73.32% was paid and 26.68% was organic for the 12 weeks ending 09/01/2010.

Additionally, you can reveal the paid and organic breakdown on specific search terms. For example, looking at the term 'cheap flights', 94.51% of the traffic this term sent to Jet Abroad - NZ was paid and 5.49% of it was organic. Given the volume of visits coming from this term and the paid versus organic breakdown, it is safe to assume this is a term that Jet Abroad - NZ invests a lot of money in. This insight is invaluable for gaining a competitive edge over your direct competitors.

Learn more about Hitwise Search Intelligence™.

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 0800 448 947.

Websites weighed down with Flash, images and unnecessary content may be costing your business more than you think - with higher bandwidth costs and server rent aside, a slow website may be impacting your overall revenue more than you realise.

Why Do Users Convert Better on Fast Sites?

Mihaly Czsikszentmihaly¹ has posited a state of mind which people get into when highly engaged, called the ‘Flow Zone’ - in which users are completely immersed in their tasks and time passes blissfully. One element consistent amongst Flow activities is, immediate feedback - people have to know when they are doing something right or wrong.

Therefore, as online marketers, to improve the user experience, you need to be sure your page load times are so low, so that they result in immediate feedback for users. That way, users are more likely to become immersed in your website, enjoy their experience with your brand, find what they‘re after and take action.

In addition to this, the less time they spend waiting for your pages to load, the less likely a distracting thought may take them away from your site.

How Can it Affect My Business?

A slow website can mean the difference between users staying on your website, taking action (e.g. making a purchase, etc) and re-visiting your website. The effects of page load times have been quantified by many of the larger industry players:

• Google found that a 30 results per page and a 500 milli-second increase in load time, decreases searches and revenue by 20% ²;
• Amazon found that every 100 milli-second increase in load time, decreases sales by 1%²;
• Facebook found that page load time is inversely proportional to pages/visit³;
• Bing tested increased page load times and found that it reduced revenue and user satisfaction (results shown below)⁴.

Quick Tips You Can Use to Improve Your Website's Speed

• Use Content Delivery Networks - if your audience is scattered across continents, you should ascertain the need for a Content Delivery Network (CDN) which distributes your content to many different locations around the world and serves content to users from the nearest server. This reduces website response time and bypasses network congestion.
• Reduce the size and number of page elements - cutting out unnecessary images, scripts and content can significantly improve load times. It can also be effective at reducing bandwidth.
• Implement server-side and client-side caching - if your website has static content like images, CSS, and JavaScript, caching them on visitors‘ computers will hasten subsequent page loads. If visitors consistently request the same pages, you may opt to cache these pages on the server side with a reverse proxy (Squid, Nginx) to speed up page delivery.
• Reduce the number of page views required to complete tasks - one way to reduce page load times, is not to have pages load and/or re-load at all. Facebook does this, by using Ajax to dynamically update content (i.e. updating your status and refreshing your news feed) without the need to refresh a page.

If you're looking for some quick and easy gains in visitor engagement, try speeding up your website.

For more information please email search.csm@hitwise.com or call 0800 448 947.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ¹^{Csikszentmihalyi, M., & Csikszentmihalyi, I. S. (1992). Optimal Experience. Cambridge University Press.}
²^{King, A. B. (2008). Website Optimization. O'Reilly.}
³^{Yang, Z. (2009, August 28). Every Millisecond Counts. Retrieved December 18, 2009, from Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=122869103919
4Schurman, E., & Brutlag, J. (2009, June 23). The User and Business Impact of Server Delays, Additional Bytes, and HTTP Chunking in Web Search. Retrieved January 8, 2010, from O'Reilly: Velocity 2009.}

Hitwise Lifestyle incorporating Mosaic New Zealand is a leading online customer segmentation and targeting tool which allows you to:

• Identify the most popular websites in an industry that attract a specific segment;
• Examine your target market's online behaviour; and
• Uncover the best websites to approach for potential affiliate partnerships.

The Hitwise Lifestyle tool also allows you access to Mosaic New Zealand which includes valuable demographic and lifestyle information on many different Mosaic New Zealand Groups and Types within the marketing landscape, allowing you to 'get to know' your audience intimately.

For example, if you were a hotel who wanted to target males in the 'Hatching Kiwis' Mosaic New Zealand Type, you could use Hitwise Lifestyle to learn more about the lifestyle characteristics of this segment, such as their family structure, education and employment information, social activities and behaviour, in order to help plan and strategically target your campaigns:

The 'Hatching Kiwis' Mosaic New Zealand Type, are typically young married couples, aged between 35-44, with very young children and living in their first homes. They are generally located in suburban areas; with a median household income of $71,000 per annum. With school and vocational qualifications, many individuals in 'Hatching Kiwis' have found full-time employment as professionals and clerical workers in public administration, scientific and technical industries. Family is their main focus, with trips to the zoo and parks a common day out. They have little time for reading newspapers or magazines, preferring to keep fit through aerobics, power walking and jogging. Eating takeaway food at home is a common alternative to cooking. Internet use is moderate, sometimes for downloading music, paying bills and online shopping - they feel that it gives them more control over their lives.

Then you might examine the top websites within the Travel - Destinations and Accommodation category that attracted the largest volume of traffic from, males, aged 35-44, classified in 'Hatching Kiwis' (as shown in the chart below). This could help you to identify which websites are effective in reaching your target audience and where to allocate your online advertising spend.

Learn more about Hitwise Lifestyle.

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.

The following report lists the most popular terms typed into a search engine for the week ending 16/01/2010 that resulted in traffic to websites classified by Experian Hitwise within the 'Travel - Destinations and Accommodation' industry. For example, the most popular search term was 'wotif' representing 0.62% of all search terms that delivered users to websites classified by Experian Hitwise in the 'Travel - Destinations and Accommodation' industry.

In the lead up to the Australasian rock festival, the Big Day Out, which kicked of in Auckland on 15th January, the event's official website jumped 59 places to rank 43rd in the Entertainment industry for the week ending 16/01/2010.

Over the past three years, the website, which provides band details, location information and ticket sales, market share has tended to peak during the week of the event.

The Big Day Out website, attracted 81.84% of upstream New Visitors - Gmail (www.gmail.com), Google (www.google.com) and YouTube (www.youtube.com) contributed the highest percentage of upstream New Visitors to the website (week ending 16/01/2010).

The most highly represented Lifestyle Mosaic New Zealand Group to visit the website, was 'Urban Intelligence' (12 rolling weeks ending 16/01/2010). The 'Urban Intelligence' Group are typically stylish young professionals, aged 25-34 years, who predominantly live in inner suburban flats or apartments. They are very ambitious, driven by success and well-educated and work in professional and technical occupations where they earn well above average household incomes. 'Urban Intelligence' are technologically savvy and heavy Internet users, using it for music downloads, online shopping and entertainment, and would prefer to do all their banking without having to visit a branch.