Christmas online shopping in Singapore and Hong Kong has gained strength over the past few years, with visits to the Shopping and Classifieds industry reaching a 3-year high during the week ending 28 November 2008 in Singapore, and week ending 13 December 2008 in Hong Kong.

There were some regional similarities in Singapore and Hong Kong, with Apparel and Accessories, Computers and Appliances and Electronics dominant verticals in all three markets (as shown below).

Apparel and Accessories was the largest retail category in Singapore, accounting for more than 1 in 5 visits to Shopping and Classifieds during the week ending 7 November 2009. Visits to the sector also grew by 34.7% year-on-year to week ending 7 November 2009.

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

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:

• Over the past 12 months the US has experienced the largest usage growth of 52.4% (the week ending 17 October 2009 compared to the week ending 18 October 2008), followed by Hong Kong growing at 38.6%, Singapore 30.5%, Australia 27.8%, UK 20.0% and New Zealand with an increase of 14.3%.
  
• In Hong Kong Social Networks and Forums are a dominant force with almost 1 in every 4 visits (23.9% share in the week ending 17 October 2009) and continuing to grow while the share of visits growth by Search Engines have been minimal.
• Social Networks and Forums hold 14.1% of the visits from Singapore Internet users compared to Search Engines' 10.1% for the week ending 17 October 2009, with a growth trend favouring Social Networks and Forums.
• Based on share of visits for the week ending 17 October 2009, Facebook is currently the number two website in other Experian Hitwise monitored markets - US, UK and New Zealand and is the leading website in Canada (since the week ending 15 August 2009), Singapore (since the week ending 22 August 2009) and Hong Kong (since the week ending 13 December 2007).
• The internal search results for each Social Network provide a picture on the consumer use and interests that marketers can align their campaigns against. For example, MySpace have a heavy music and entertainment orientation; Facebook: entertainment and utility; LinkedIn: career and professional and Twitter: topical and entertainment. The communal use of each Social Network is unique and requires a bespoke execution of your marketing initiatives.

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

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, MyWedding.com (www.mywedding.com) is attempting to identify affiliate partners that work for their competitor Singapore Brides (www.singaporebrides.com). Through utilising Hitwise Clickstream reports, MyWedding.com will see the top ten sources of traffic to Singapore Brides for the week ending 21/11/2009 included: Google Singapore (www.google.com.sg), Facebook (www.facebook.com), Gmail (www.gmail.com) and SingaporeMotherhood.com (www.singaporemotherhood.com). MyWedding.com can use this for comparison purposes to evaluate their success at attracting visits from search engines, email services, social networking and forums 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 800 6162 150.

We are all aware of the runaway train that is Facebook (www.facebook.com) - a phenomenon that doesn't look like abating any time soon. It is the main driver behind the massive year-on-year increase of the Hitwise category 'Computers and Internet - Social Networking and Forums' and it's meteoric rise has now installed it as the most popular website in Singapore ahead of Google (www.google.com.sg) (October 2009).

The social networking craze however cannot be attributed solely to Facebook with a number of social networking websites coming from near obscurity a year ago, now commanding significant amounts of traffic themselves (when comparing October 2008 and 2009). Looking at the Social Networking and Forums category, these include: 4th ranked Twitter (www.twitter.com) and 10th ranked Tumblr (www.tumblr.com), increasing their respective year-on-year market share by over 11 times and 5th ranked Plurk (www.plurk.com) up 600% compared to last year.

Now you know.

The following report lists the most popular terms typed into a search engine over the 24 weeks ending 21/11/2009 that resulted in traffic to websites classified by Experian Hitwise within the 'Shopping and Classifieds - Appliances and Electronics' industry. For example, the most popular search term was 'singtel' representing 3.46% of all search terms that delivered users to websites classified by Experian Hitwise in the 'Shopping and Classifieds - Appliances and Electronics' industry.