Shoppers spend up big for
Valentine's Day
The lead-up to Valentine's Day on February 14 saw
Singaporean Romeos rushing online to spoil their loved ones with a range
of gifts and flowers.
Several online florists experienced surges in
traffic in the weeks leading up to the day, with Singapore's own Far East
Flora (www.fareastflora.com) leading the pack. The site, which
sells a range of floral bouquets and gifts, increased its traffic by more
than 300% from week ending January 7 to the week ending February 11. It
was the number 3 online florist in the Flowers & Gifts retail category
on Hitwise that week, with more than 11% market share. Previously, the
site was ranked #4 after birthday reminder services Birthday Alarm (www.birthdayalarm.com), gift card site Hallmark.com (www.hallmark.com), and
gift site Noel Gifts (www.noelgifts.com).
Other popular online
florists during the Valentine's Day season included Prince's Flower Shop
(www.prince.com.sg),
Xpress Flowers (www.xpressflower.com), and 1-800-Flowers (www.1800flowers.com).
These sites received a pre-Valentine's boost in All Categories traffic of
up to 400% from the week ending January 7 to the week ending February 11.
More lavish lovers were splashing out on expensive jewelry, and
possibly engagement rings for Valentine's Day, if data from the Apparel
& Accessories category is anything to go by. One of the fastest-moving
sites in this category for the week ending February 11 was Goldheart
Jewelry (www.goldheart.com.sg), which offered a special
Valentine's Day collection called 'Love Story by Goldheart'. Goldheart's
site increased its traffic by more than 100% in the Apparel &
Accessories category from the week ending February 4 to the week ending
February 11.
Fast mover -
Wedding-Travel.com
www.wedding-travel.com
Position week ending
February 11: 16,615
Position week ending February 18: 8,873
Positions jumped: 7,742
Continuing with the romantic theme this
month, Singaporean website Wedding & Travel (www.wedding-travel.com) has received a tremendous boost
in traffic during the month of February.
The month of Valentine's
Day clearly inspired many couples to start thinking seriously about their
nuptials, and the site, a Singapore-centric guide to planning weddings
with a directory of local businesses, jumped more than 7,000 places among
all websites visited for the week ending February 11 and the week ending
February 18. The site also jumped to 10 from 12 in the Weddings category
during the same period.
The Weddings category also recovered from
its post-Christmas slump during February, with a 14% increase in market
share from the week ending February 4 to the week ending February 18.
Monthly Hitwise data for February 2005 show that February will most likely
be the biggest month of the year for sites in the online Weddings sector.
Hitwise for Benchmarking
While most organizations have a comprehensive
understanding of how their customers interact with their own website, few
have an overview of how their online business compares to their industry.
Although 'website centric' information is crucial for online
marketers, equally important is being able to benchmark your own website
against other players in your industry. By doing so, your online business
can be put into context and marketers have the opportunity to learn from
industry best practices.
Because we measure the online behaviour of
millions of Internet users every day, only Hitwise can provide marketers
with a comprehensive overview of the online competitive environment,
enabling marketers to benchmark their performance against
competitors.
For example if an online bookstore wanted to benchmark
their online performance against their three key competitors, here are
some of the insights they could uncover with Hitwise:
- How does my website rank against competitors in the Shopping - Books
industry, and against all websites?
- How much time do people spend on my website versus competitive
websites?
- Which search engines drive traffic to my website versus competitive
websites?
Media
queries at Hitwise
If you are interested in using Hitwise content and
statistics in publications and presentations, we encourage you to do so.
Please source the content as "Hitwise Singapore
- sg.hitwise.com".
Additionally - if you require
assistance with statistics or content, please feel free to contact James
Borg at james.borg@hitwise.com.
About this Newsletter
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Copyright Hitwise Pty Ltd, February
2006
Hitwise Singapore
Newsletter - February 2006 
Real-time competitive
intelligence
