About Hitwise
Hitwise is the leader in online competitive intelligence. Contact Hitwise to maximize your online marketing programs.
Hitwise Intelligence - Robin Goad - UK
Analyst Weblog
« Adulthood and Kidulthood: sequels and the halo effect | How to save money in a recession »
Apple iPhone, O2 and the purchasing cycle
July 08, 2008
O2 started taking orders for Apple’s new 3G iPhone yesterday, and as you would expect it experienced a spike in traffic to both its homepage and online shop. Unfortunately the surge in demand caused the carrier’s site to crash, although it is now back online. However, O2 is already out of iPhones, and its site is carrying a message requesting customers come back on July 10th to place their order. Carphone Warehouse, which also experienced an increase in traffic yesterday, has a similar message up on its site.
Looking at the chart above, its interesting to see how yesterday’s surge in traffic compares with the one last month (when the new mobile phone was announced). Last time both O2 and Apple experienced an increase in traffic, but yesterday traffic to the manufacturer’s site hardly increased at all.
This nicely illustrates how consumer behaviour changes between the information gathering stage and the point of purchase. During the June peak, 22.4% of people searching for iPhone went to Apple’s official iPhone site, while 14.0% went to www.o2.co.uk. This time, O2 has taken the top spot, with 23.5% of traffic, compared with Apple’s 18.7%. That said, consumers still need a bit of nudge: 90% of O2's traffic from the term 'iphone' comes from paid search, up from 50% last month.
Tweet
Posted by Robin Goad at 01:30 PM
| 
(3)
| 
(0)
In Categories Gadgets | Mobile phones | Retail | Search | Shopping and Classifieds
Comments
How can these guys (the carriers) not be prepared for the spike in traffic? I don't really get it. Surely you don't have so little capacity in reserve that something like this makes the system fall over?
Posted by cycle carrier | May 9, 2010 08:38 PM
I think US do it for the thrill. It's much more exciting to wait for hours than just to click a button.
Posted by cheap dining chairs | March 24, 2011 12:46 PM
Well the UK definitely has better luck than the US. Those in the US are not allowed to buy the phones off the net which is certainly unusual - thus resulting in ridiculously long lines. UK always does it better it seems?
Posted by Brick Marketing | July 8, 2008 07:12 PM