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Hitwise Intelligence - Robin Goad - UK

Analyst Weblog

Category Archives: Fashion

The changing facets of social shopping online

April 07, 2011

We had quite a few comments on my post last month about Groupon UK and the rise of social shopping. Given the interest surrounding this topic, I thought I’d follow up with a post which concentrates on the key differences... Continue reading...

Which retailers are leveraging the marketing power of Facebook?

February 24, 2011

You don’t have to look far online to find praise for Facebook. The UK’s most popular social network has been heralded as an indispensible tool for online advertising and social engagement for some time now. But which brands are making... Continue reading...

ASOS capitalise on Facebook traffic with social store

January 20, 2011

Online fashion retailer ASOS announced yesterday that it would be opening a Facebook store at the end of January, allowing users to buy items directly from the social network rather than having to click through to the ASOS homepage. ASOS... Continue reading...

Golden Globes Glee as Lea Michele still tops searches

January 14, 2011

Awards season officially starts this Sunday when Hollywood’s A-listers hit the red carpet for the 68th Golden Globe Awards. In the last four weeks searches for terms related to the Golden Globes have increased 73% as anticipation rises ahead of... Continue reading...

2010 Online: the year in review

December 21, 2010

I can scarcely believe that a whole year has passed since I was sitting here writing the 2009 review, but 12 months to the day here we are, and it’s been another fascinating year in the digital world. Once again... Continue reading...

Amazon.com and fashion brands buck trend to increase traffic post Cyber Sunday

December 14, 2010

Despite last Sunday (5 December) being the busiest pre-Christmas day of the year for online retailers, some of the top retail brands actually received more visits from UK Internet users this Sunday (12 December) than the famous “Cyber Sunday”. After... Continue reading...

Tweet Posted by Robin Goad at 02:28 PM | (0)
In Categories Branding | Christmas | Fashion | Shopping and Classifieds

Snoods, Boots and Snow Chains up after cold spell

December 10, 2010

The snow may be thawing but the cold weather has had its effect online by encouraging people to buy more winter clothing including jumpers, scarves and boots. In our latest press release we unveiled the most searched for products on... Continue reading...

Tweet Posted by Robin Goad at 05:29 PM | (1) | (0)
In Categories Fashion | Shopping and Classifieds | Weather

Chile Miner Rescue Coverage: The BBC vs Sky News

October 15, 2010

There was a spur of optimism to the news on Wednesday evening as the 33 miners in Chile who had been trapped for 69 days underground were finally rescued. The live broadcast of the event made the rescue all the... Continue reading...

South African Airways and beer companies biggest beneficiaries of World Cup sponsorship so far

June 15, 2010

Every week during the World Cup we’ll be publishing the Experian Hitwise Brand Search Index, our way of measuring a selection of brands’ sponsorship activities. The Index is based upon the volume of UK Internet searches for multiple variations of... Continue reading...

Selfridges: the impact of a transactional website

May 21, 2010

One of the websites that fared well in my analysis of the online luxury market was Selfridges. The famous department store’s homepage has recently gone transactional, and this has had a positive impact on its retail ranking in the UK.... Continue reading...

Luxury and bespoke searches: travel, fashion and furniture

May 19, 2010

Yesterday I presented at the Luxury Interactive 2010 conference in London, and I thought I’d share a couple of the finding from the research that I carried out for the event. The first thing I did was to look at... Continue reading...

Shop opening times searches up 11% this Christmas

December 30, 2009

Just after Easter we wrote a blog about the popularity of searches for shop opening times / hours. That analysis showed that searches for retailer opening times spiked during the May and August bank holidays, over Easter, and at Christmas... Continue reading...

Post-Christmas retail round up: online and offline traffic spikes on Boxing Day

December 29, 2009

As we’ve pointed out for the last couple of years, the post-Christmas period has become increasingly important for online retailers – and this year is proving no exception. Boxing Day (December 26th) was again the busiest day for online retailers... Continue reading...

UK Halloween and fancy dress costume searches increasing

November 02, 2009

Judging by the amount of merchandise for sale in the shops, it feels like Halloween becomes more popular every year in the UK. And Hitwise search data seems to bear this out: the chart below illustrates the breadth of searches... Continue reading...

Pre-Christmas sales searches: let the game of Retail Chicken commence!

October 09, 2009

We’ve written a lot about the growth of voucher searches and the emergence of the ‘maximising consumer’ recently. Indeed, UK Internet searches for discount vouchers continue to increase: as of last week, searches for our portfolio of voucher-related searches were... Continue reading...

Top 100 student websites in the UK

June 02, 2009

Yesterday I received a call from Sridhar Venkatapuram of the London Business School asking me about the online behaviour of students in the UK. I mentioned on Twitter that I was pulling a list of the 100 most popular websites... Continue reading...

Online retailers receiving less traffic from paid search, but more from social networks

April 22, 2009

The amount of traffic that online retailers receive from paid search – i.e. from sponsored or paid for links on search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, Live and Ask - has fallen over the last 12 months. During March 2009,... Continue reading...

Sales searches drive department store traffic

April 02, 2009

The spring sales have started on the high street, and department stores are the main beneficiaries online. While UK Internet visits to our Shopping and Classifieds parent category increased by just 0.9% last week, a custom category of ‘traditional’ high... Continue reading...

BBC F1 and the new England Kit

March 30, 2009

The Formula 1 season kicked off this weekend, with Jenson Button pulling off a surprise victory for the new Brawn team. This year the UK television coverage has returned to the BBC after more than a decade with ITV. In... Continue reading...

Top 10 websites of 2008

March 03, 2009

We published the results of the Hitwise UK Online Performance Awards today. These list the 10 most visited websites in the UK during 2008 for over 60 industry categories. You can see the full list on the awards microsite, but... Continue reading...

Vouchers vs. sales: battle of the online discounts

January 13, 2009

Around this time last year we reported that post-Christmas sales searches had trebled; a couple of weeks ago we noted that this year the increase was just 3.2%. However, if Christmas 2007 was the year that online sales went mainstream,... Continue reading...

UK online retail: Christmas round up

December 29, 2008

Given the economic conditions, people are watching Christmas retail numbers like hawks. Below are the key numbers for online shopping in the UK over the last few days. Sales searches up 3.2% Combined, UK Internet searches for the terms ‘sales’... Continue reading...

Pre-Christmas peaks in online retail traffic

December 16, 2008

In our retail webinar last week I noted that UK pre-Christmas Internet traffic to Shopping and Classified websites has already started to decline from its peak on Sunday November 30th. As the data in the chart below illustrates, the week... Continue reading...

High street retailers’ online demographics

December 11, 2008

High street retailers received 22% more UK Internet visits than online only retailers in November, and the gap is likely to widen during December. The chart below illustrates UK Internet visits to our two custom categories of high street and... Continue reading...

Marks & Spencer and Debenhams sales

November 24, 2008

As many had predicted, the pre-Christmas sales and discount offers started in earnest last week, with Marks & Spencer and Debenhams amongst the high profile names offering reductions both on the high street and online. As you would expect, both... Continue reading...

Olympics winners: sports sites, bike retailers and sportswear manufacturers

August 29, 2008

Following the success of Team GB in Beijing, we were curious to see who else benefited from the Olympics hype. As the chart below illustrates, the most clear online winners were sports websites, both information and retail sites. UK Internet... Continue reading...

Fast moving search terms: Olympics, BBC iPlayer, UCAS and fantasy football

August 18, 2008

The 10 fastest moving search terms in the UK last week were: 1. ucas track 2. bbc olympics 3. fantasy premier league 4. dream team 5. michael phelps 6. tom daley 7. the sun dream team 8. joules 9. last... Continue reading...

Price comparison traffic up 37% thanks to economic downturn

July 15, 2008

With prices rising and the credit crunch biting, consumers are taking more time to find the best deals online. Last week we contributed to an Experian Footfall report which highlighted the downturn on the high street and in out of... Continue reading...

Asos.com: growth and demographics

July 02, 2008

Internet clothing retailer Asos.com seems to have shrugged off the economic downturn by yesterday announcing that it had doubled sales over the last 3 months. Following our analysis of the rapidly growing UK online fashion market last week, this didn’t... Continue reading...

Online fashion retail still growing despite high street slowdown

June 26, 2008

The CBI has issued a report claiming that clothing retailers have just experienced their worst month for quarter of a century. I can only assume that this fall in sales must be down to an underperforming high street, because the... Continue reading...

Online vouchers prove popular in bargain-hungry Britain

June 06, 2008

With the economy slowing and prices rising, everyone is on the lookout for a bargain. Vouchers have become a popular way of promoting discounts, particularly around Christmas time. In fact, they have become some popular that price sensitive shoppers are... Continue reading...

SATC more popular in UK than USA

May 27, 2008

The decision to hold the world premiere of the new Sex and the City movie in London has led to a surge in online searches in the UK. American interest in the film is yet to take off, although this... Continue reading...

Miss Bimbo: who is visiting?

April 01, 2008

The ‘virtual fashion game’ Miss Bimbo has picked up a lot of press - Google News UK was the second ranked site receiving up traffic from the search term ‘miss bimbo’ last week. The website allows users to create a... Continue reading...

Sales searches trebled in 2007

January 03, 2008

The number of UK consumers searching for post-Christmas sales online more than trebled during the 2007 holiday period. There were 249% more UK internet searches for the term ‘sales’ for the week ending 29th December 2007 than for the comparable... Continue reading...

High street retailers overtake pure-play retailers online

November 16, 2007

High street retailers received over half of all UK Internet visits to online retailers during October (based on two Hitwise custom categories consisting of the top 50 high street and non-high street online retailers in the UK, excluding online auctions... Continue reading...

Robin Goad

Research Director, Hitwise UK.