search marketing blog: ambergreen

The internet has become more popular than gardening or DIY for pensioners according to new research by AXA insurance group.

The UK’s pensioners now spend an average of 6 hours per week online, much of which is devoted to keeping in touch with family and friends – 88% chat regularly with friends and family online. Emailing and searching are the most popular activities, while 4 in 10 pensioners shop online.

These figures put the UK’s pensioners way ahead of their European neighbours who all spend much less time online than in the UK.

The research found that:

45% purchase travel tickets online

35% use online banking online

28% read online news

1 in 3 purchase CDs, DVDs or theatre tickets online

11% buy groceries online

showing that pensioners are beginning to avoid the high street and make use of the convenience internet shopping provides.

Soppy romantics all over the UK are expected to spend £1.32 billion on Valentines Day according to the British Retail Consortium.  

While men are more likely to buy gifts online, both sexes will spend an average of £95.80 on flowers, chocolates, jewellery and other gifts.  

Over 50% of the population are expected to splash out on Valentines Day, with 21 million roses being sent on the most romantic day of the year.

New figures from ClickForensics have shown that click fraud continued to rise in the last quarter of 2006, with the highest level all year being recorded.

The Click Fraud Index figures imply that the average click fraud rate was 14.2%, compared with 13.7%, 14.1% and 13.8% for the previous quarters respectively,

The report also found that the average click fraud rate of PPC ads appearing on content networks was 19.2% for Q4.

However, Google isn’t exactly in agreement, claiming that the actual click fraud rate is lower than 2%.

Shuman Ghosemajumder, business product manager for Trust & Safety at Google, hit back on his personal blog, saying that the data was: “not at all representative of the actual statistics of our network.”

Ghosemajumder points out problems in the ClickForensics methodology, saying that Google had found serious flaws in their counting process, and that the “source of this problem is incorrectly counting page views – from users browsing through an advertiser’s site – as clicks.”

I think we can leave them to fight it out…

Google have – as always – come out top of the US search engine market share statistics for December, driving 50.8% of all searches, with Yahoo in second place with 23.6%.

Microsoft’s Windows Live takes only 8.4% share, but it will be interesting to see how, or if, this changes over the next few months as Vista starts to roll out with its integrated Live Search options.

Online clothing sales have increased by 461% in the past five years, with £1.2bn spent online in 2006 alone according to new research from Mintel.

Although online clothing sales only account for 3% of online retail sales, the IMRG estimates that online clothing buys now account for 10% of the UK’s total retail sales.

Not being able to try before you clearly doesn’t deter many online shoppers these days; estimates predict a 138% increase in online clothes shopping over the next 4 years, when sales are expected to reach £2.9bn. 

Mintel analyst Neil Mason told E-consultancy: “Last year was the first year that the business case for selling fashion over the internet came close to being proven, and fashion retailers have only just started to see the justification in investing millions of pounds in improving their internet presence.”

With 98% of UK internet users now shopping online (the UK spends more online than any other European country) it’s no surprise that online spend continues to rise, although a recent survey found that many online retailers had plenty of room for improvement.

According to Marketing Assistance and Blast Radius, differences in the way retailers and consumers think was damaging customer experience, leaving much room for improvement.

UK shoppers buy more items online than their European counterparts according to new research by the European Interactive Advertising Association.

The research shows that UK shoppers bought 18 items online in six months in 2006, compared to 14 items during the same period in 2005. 

UK spend was, unsurprisingly higher than the European average, with the UK spending an average of £804, £301 more than European online shoppers.

98% of UK internet users now shop online, an indication of increasingly sophisticated shopping habits says Michael Kleindl, Chairman of the EIAA. 

“As consumers further embrace their digital lifestyles, they are becoming more ambitious in what they choose to buy over the internet as well as how much they spend.

“This research demonstrates the increasing trust in the internet amongst consumers to obtain information and buy a growing range of products. More money spent and items bought online shows that consumers are integrating online shopping into their daily lives.”

The study found that UK shoppers are bargain hunters not unlike myself - 42% of use comparison sites to find the best price for goods, while 49% visit auction sites at least once a month.  

Most people use two word search phrases according to new research from web ranking provider RankStat, which reported that 28.38% of users typed a two word search query into search engines.

Three and four word phrases were the next most popular key phrase terms, with 27.15 % using 3 word phrases and 16.42% using 4 word phrases respectively.

The 10 most used word phrases in search engines on the web are:

2 word phrases; 28.38%

3 word phrases; 27.15%

4 word phrases; 16.42%

1 word phrases; 13.48%

5 word phrases; 8.03%

6 word phrases; 3.67%

7 word phrases; 1.63%

8 word phrases; 0.73%

9 word phrases; 0.34%

10 word phrases; 0.16%

The survey highlights how maturing internet users have moved away from the generic one word search phrase to refine their search requests. The increasing sophistication of user search techniques have created progressively more complex search phrases as users understanding of search engines have grown.

90% of the UK’s marketers are planning to increase their online direct marketing spend according to new research from data analysis software company Alterian.

Alterian’s survey of marketing professionals in North America and the UK found that only 14% of UK professionals were planning on increasing their direct mail spend. North American responses indicated that direct mail is much more popular across the Atlantic, with 50% of marketers intending to increase spend.

Read Alterian’s full research document

While the run up to Christmas saw online sales in the four weeks leading up to the big day showing an increase of almost 50% on 2005’s figures, it seems that the busiest day for online retailers in 2006 was Wednesday 27 December.

In collaboration with the IMRG, market research company eDigitalResearch showed just how successful the 2006 holiday shopping season had been, with sales reaching almost £1 billion pounds per week during the first three weeks of December.

While pre-Christmas Monday’s had previously proved to be the big traffic days, the 27th saw online sales driving traffic as many shoppers researched prices online before shopping on the high street.  Online sales showed a 30 % increase on figures from Monday, 11 December, the next best day of online retailing.

Hitwise have reported on just how successful the Christmas period was for many online retailers, following the release of Christmas trading figures from the IMRG indicating that online sales in the four weeks leading up to Christmas reached £3.7bn, an increase of almost 50% on 2005’s figures, while high street sales are estimated to have risen just 2.5% over last year.

Heather Hopkins, Hitwise’s Director of Research in the UK, showed that December’s visits to the Hitwise Retail Index (an index of 100 leading retail websites) were up 5% year-on-year, slightly down from the 8% predicted back in September. 

Having predicted that high street brands would continue to lose out to internet retailers, the reality proved this to be correct, with e-commerce investments paying off in market share increases. 

Among the top 100 retailers to benefit from this increase in market share were

M&S – 25% increase in market share

Woolworths - 26% increase

HMV.co.uk – 58%

John Lewis – 23%

Waitrose – 103%