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Hitwise Intelligence - Heather Hopkins - UK
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Moonpig - Relative Newcover Takes #3 Spot Among Flowers and Gifts
February 14, 2007
Have you heard of Moonpig? I hadn't before yesterday when I wrote up a quick news release for Valentine's Day. The site caught my eye as it ranked #3 among Flowers and Gifts websites last week (the peak week for Valentine's shopping online), just behind Tesco Flowers and Interflora and up from #31 the same week last year. Moonpig offers personalised cards delivered by mail.
I checked HItwise data to try to try to understand the website's rapid rise and it seems to be a result of outreach to blogs and forums, increased brand awareness and paid search marketing.
The following chart shows the site's share of UK internet visits from January 2006 to the end of last week - up nearly four fold in the past four weeks and up three and a half times year on year.
Brand Awareness:
There has been a five fold increase in the share of UK internet searches for "moonpig" year on year last week. Brand searches can be an excellent measure of brand awareness as it indicates the share of consumers that are typing in a brand name into a search engine.
Paid Search Marketing:
Last week, 44% of the site's traffic came from a search engine and 45% of that traffic came from paid listings in the past four weeks. Popular terms relating to Valentines Day were prominent in the search terms sending vistis to the website. Moonpig was also relatively successful at attracting visits from these terms, being the #3 website receiving visits from "valentines cards" and "valentine cards" and #5 for searches for "valentine". The following table shows the top 16 search terms sending visits to Moonpig, showing the rate at which consumers were coming through on a paid or organic listing.
Blogs and Forums
Having never been lucky enough to receive a card from Moonpig and never having heard of the website before yesterday, I did a search on Google News to see if the site had received some good PR recently to help boost brand recognition. Yesteday, a search for "moonpig" on Google UK News returned no results (today there is one from the release we issued yesterday!). However, the same query on Google Blog Search returned 107 results.
The content of the blogs and forums listed on Google Blog Search indicate that Moonpig has reached out to these sites with generous offers and promotions. This has spread the word virally about their service. MSN Hotmail (often used to spread offers to friends) was the #2 source of traffic to the site last week, accounting for 4.18% of upstream visits. MoneySavingExpert.com accounted for 1.81% and Hot UK Deals for 1.53%. Both of these sites figure in the top 10 for upstream visits to Moonpig last week.
This is a good reminder of how quickly things can change on the web with new entrants rising rapidly to the top of the ranks. It is also a good reminder that a good product coupled with clever online marketing can do wonders for brand awareness.
Posted by Heather Hopkins at 09:13 AM
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Comments
I can't believe my Moonpig card didn't get through to you Heather!!
Posted by steve clayton | February 15, 2007 01:50 PM
Great post Heather, really pleasing to see sites like Moonpig performing so well. I've been using their personalised cards for over a year now and it was my mum who recommended it to me! Virtually all of the cards I send now come from Moonpig these days because the product is so good.
I've found myself telling all my friends about the site for a while now so I would probably guess that personal recommendations and word of mouth will also have had something to do with their huge growth (although this is slightly less tangible to measure).
Combine this with the fact that if you receive a Moonpig card for the first time there is the initial wow factor about the personalisation that drives people to want to send equivalent cards when its their friends / family members birthdays. This type of exponential growth could well keep going as their brand begins to hit a tipping point in the public consciousness (so now might be the time to invest in Moonpig)!
Thanks again,
Finlay
Posted by Finlay | February 15, 2007 01:31 AM