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Hitwise Intelligence - Heather Hopkins - UK
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Valentine Poems and Flowers Popular in the UK
February 14, 2006
With Valentine's Day fast approaching and seeing as I don't yet have a gift for my valentine, I thought I'd check on Hitwise to find out what the most popular Valentine's Day gifts are this year.
The categories that typically enjoy a lift at this time of year are Dating, Intimate Apparel and Accessories and Flowers and Gifts. This year, flowers seem to be the gift of choice. UK Visits to Dating sites were up 3% last week (compared with the week prior), visits to Intimate and Apparel sites were up 4.25% and visits to Flowers and Gifts sites were up 28%.
Tesco Flowers ranked #1 among Flowers and Gifts websites last week based on UK visits, up from a ranking of 8th one month ago (week ending 14th January 2006). Market share of UK visits to Tesco Flowers increased eight times in the past four weeks and doubled in the past week alone.
Dubbed the "War of the Valentine Roses" in an article in the Times Online, Tesco started selling Valentine’s bouquets of a dozen roses for £15.97 including courier delivery. The cut-rate price seems to have generated significant online interest, with the Tesco Flowers website leaping ahead of competitors in the share of UK visits it attracts.
While Tesco Flowers received nearly half (47%) of its traffic from Tesco.com last week, search engines also featured prominently among sites sending visits to Tesco Flowers. I have been thinking a lot about the challenges of search engine brand management for a White Paper I am working on and so was interested to see that about 30% of searches for 'tesco flowers' send visits to websites other than Tesco Flowers.
In the four weeks ending 11th February 2006, 70% of UK visits for searches on ‘tesco flowers’ sent visits to www.tesco.com/flowers, 10% of visits from searches for ‘tesco flowers’ went to www.247shop.co.uk and 3% went to both Interflora and www.bunches.co.uk. The share of visits from searches for ‘tesco flowers’ going to competitor websites is far higher than average. According to the White Paper, approximately 85% of visits from searches for a brand term send visits to the brand-owners’ website. The challenge in this case is of course that retailers can broad match on the term 'flowers' and so can appear in sponsored listings for any searches that include the keyword 'flowers'.
The relatively large percentage of visits from searches for 'tesco flowers' that send visits to Tesco's competitors underscores the highly competitive landscape facing retailers. Firms can bid on the term 'flowers' on the search engines and so can appear among sponsored listings in search results when consumers search for 'tesco flowers'. Brand management through search engines poses a real challenge to brand owners who should actively monitor competitive threats.
In reviewing Hitwise data, I also found that Valentine’s Day related searches were not strictly commercial. Last week, the share of UK internet searches for 'valentine poems' surpassed other search terms that include the keywords 'valentine' or 'valentines'. Searches for 'valentine poems' increased 4 times last week and surged ahead of searches for 'valentines day' and 'valentines gifts'.
The website receiving the largest volume of visits from searches for 'valentine poems' in the past four weeks was www.poemsforfree.co.uk, whose share of UK internet visits doubled last week. The website attracted a larger share of visits than average from the 18-24 age group and the social grades C2 & D/E, indicating that the young and less well-off segments of the population are more active in seeking low-cost romantic tokens this Valentine's Day.
I hope my valentine won't read anything into the fact that I will probably just make him card. Though, given that I have just blogged about it - he may not be that surprised!
Posted by Heather Hopkins at 04:30 AM
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Comments
Bit too late to be commenting, but interesting stats there. The florist industry landscape has changed a bit since your article. But still relevant!
Posted by ArenaFlowers | August 3, 2007 12:50 PM
That's a really interesting article, would you be able to look at the Baby Gifts sector?
Posted by Beverly Jones | March 3, 2006 05:28 AM