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Hitwise Intelligence - Robin Goad - UK

Analyst Weblog

Category Archives: Fashion

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.