| UK blog traffic reaches all-time high |
UK Internet visits to weblogs reached an all-time high during the week ending 7/6/2008, with traffic to the Hitwise Lifestyle - Blogs and Personal Websites category accounting for 1.19% of all UK Internet traffic, equivalent to one in every 84 website visits.
The market share of blogs has been increasing steadily over the last three years according to Hitwise monthly data. Traffic to News and Media sites has also increased over the same period, with these 'traditional' news sites still receiving more traffic than blogs. However, traffic to blog sites is growing at a much faster rate: over the last three years, UK Internet traffic to Hitwise's Blogs and Personal Websites category has increased by 171%, compared to a 70% increase in traffic to News and Media sites.
Interestingly, blogs have a greater market share of visits in the UK than in the US. Blogs accounted for 1.09% of all Internet visits in Britain during May, but only 0.73% in the US.
The top 20 websites in the Blogs and Personal Websites category cover a variety of topics, ranging from gadgets to gossip. Blogger (www.blogger.com) is the most popular blogging platform, while the appearance of MySpace Blog (blog.myspace.com) in the top three highlights the importance of social networking blogs. Traditional media players also feature prominently, with BBC Blog Network (www.bbc.co.uk/blogs) and Guardian Unlimited Blogs (blogs.guardian.co.uk) ranked in the top 10.
To receive a monthly round-up of trends that matter to the news, media, entertainment, social networking, blogging and online video industries, click here.
|
 |
|
|
| the verve - www.theverve.co.uk |
Position for week ending 28/6/2008: #83 (within Music - Bands and Artists)
Position for week ending 5/7/2008: #11 (within Music - Bands and Artists)
Positions Jumped: 72
Traffic to the official website for British band The Verve hit an all-time high in the week after the band headlined this year's controversial Glastonbury Festival. The website reached the #11 position in the Music - Bands and Artists category during the week ending 5/7/2008, and visits to www.theverve.co.uk in this week were 37.5% higher than when The Verve announced their reunion tour during the first week of July in 2007.
Interestingly, visits to www.theverve.co.uk were 5.5 times higher during the Glastonbury Festival than visits to www.jayzonline.com - the official website for the American rapper Jay-Z, who caused a storm of controversy as the first hip hop act to fill the prestigious Saturday night slot at Glastonbury.
One in five downstream visits from The Verve's website during the week ending 5/7/2008 went to MySpace, where fans could preview the first release from the upcoming Verve album.
|
| Increasing your customer base by analysing your competitors’ new and returning visitors |
Have you ever wondered how much new traffic your competitors are getting from search engines or affiliates? By using the Hitwise Clickstream New and Returning Visitors report, you can determine the proportion of new versus repeat visitors that search engines, partners and affiliates are sending to your competitors.
For example, if you run a video game retail website and are looking to increase your customer base, you may be interested in seeing where your competitor GAME gets its new visitors from. Using New and Returning Visitors you can find that .59% of visitors to www.game.co.uk came from price comparison website Kelkoo for the week ending 5/7/08, and that of these, 77.59% were new visitors. From this information, you can see that Kelkoo could be a great website to partner with in order to redirect some of that new traffic to your website. This insight is invaluable for gaining an edge over your direct competitors.
To learn more about Hitwise Clickstream and New and Returning Visitors reports, download the Hitwise Clickstream Product Fact Sheet.
|
| Marketing Success in a Slowdown |
There's no hiding from the latest news and commentary on the declining state of the economy and the distinctly gloomy forecasts for the near financial future. The new report from Experian Integrated Marketing, 'Marketing Success in a Slowdown' reveals opportunities to benefit from these changing conditions, and provides practical advice on how to emerge from economic challenges ahead of your competition.
To download a copy of this report, click here.
|
| Summer Sales |
The summer sales are now in full swing and UK Internet users are continuing to look for a bargain. Searches for both the singular and plural terms ('sale' and 'sales') shot up to their highest level during June 2008 since the Christmas/New Year sales period.
Given this obvious online appetite for sales, it is perhaps surprising that retailers are not engaging in more active email campaigns to promote their end-of-season bargains. The amount of traffic that websites in the Hitwise Shopping and Classifieds category received from sites in the Computers and Internet - Email Services category actually decreased slightly during the week ending 31/5/08, from 5% to 4.7%. However, email campaigns have worked for some of the big online retailers - Play.com, John Lewis, and Matalan - who all received a considerable boost in traffic from sites in the Email Services category during May.
Looking at the top three webmail providers in the UK - Windows Live Hotmail, Yahoo! UK Mail and Gmail, - it's interesting to note that one provider in particular seems to be most effective at delivering traffic to retailers. Yahoo! UK Mail consistently sends more of its traffic to sites in the Shopping and Classifieds category than either Gmail or Windows Live Mail. During June 2008, 13% of Yahoo! UK Mail's downstream traffic went to retail websites, noticeably more than sent to retail websites by both Gmail (10.3%) and Hotmail (9.2%).
|
|
