Twitter Flies

Last year, according to Hitwise, one of the fastest growing websites was Twitter.

Over 12 months, the site saw a massive increase of traffic, and the latest data ranks the microblogging site as the 291st most visited web site in the UK, up from a ranking of 2,953. UK traffic to the site increased by a whopping 974% over the period.

Hitwise also suggested that Twitter is likely to be even more popular than the figures suggest, if statistics for people accessing their accounts via mobile phones and third-party applications were included.

As most people who are familiar with Twitter will know, it has now become an important part of the internet network, helpfully driving traffic to other sites. According to Hitwise, around 10% of redirecting tweets send users to news and media sites and over 17% end up on entertainment sites, although I’m interested to see how they accurately measured this. Thoughts, anyone?

Post-Christmas Frenzy

According to most national newspapers, everyone and anyone was shopping online during Christmas Day, hitting the sales in search of a bargain; especially as the likes of Marks and Spencers started their online sale at 12:01am that day, and John Lewis began theirs at 6pm on xmas eve.

Whilst brick ‘n mortar shops are panicking and feel they need to carry out this sort of crazy behaviour, in reality, internet shopping was fairly quiet over these two days.

Plusnet did a quick web-survey and found that the number one site on Christmas Day was Google, as usual. But a close second was Facebook, steadily increasing in numbers as the day wore on (and the boredom set in). Incidentally, did anyone leave a message on the Queens Facebook page following the Christmas speech?

Boxing Day saw the biggest boost: Amazon, iTunes and Play.com all saw massive amounts of traffic over the 24hr period. Even eBay proved very popular – perhaps as people needed to get rid of unwanted gifts without offending anyone?

Missing Tricks – No Analytics

“UK online retailers are disturbingly uninformed about the effectiveness of their digital marketing mix, despite facing one of the most frugal consumer Christmases on record, research from Coremetrics has revealed.

Coremetrics commissioned the survey to investigate the dynamics of European digital marketing, as seen through retailers’ own eyes, as well as the customers they target. 

 The survey found that 94% of UK e-retailers take a multi-channel approach, using five or more digital marketing elements, but of these, 74% do not measure Return On Investment (ROI). 

 Search, renowned as one of the most measurable techniques proved to be a ’shot in the dark’ activity – with 80% of natural search and 66% of Pay Per Click (PPC) activities not measured for ROI. 

 The Coremetrics’ survey also examined consumer-spending habits, unsurprisingly finding that price-cutting was the biggest priority for 92% of consumers this Christmas.  Encouraging friends and family to cap spending on gifts (55 per cent), buying cheaper gifts (32 per cent) and stalling shopping until the January sales (16 per cent), were the most popular Christmas cost-cutting strategies for consumers.

 However, Coremetrics’ research showed more effective ways of targeting to gain a competitive edge in tough times. Chief channels identified by consumers for driving their buying decisions were price comparison websites (61%), online reviews (53%) and brand recognition (44%). Yet, of those marketers that do not already carry out these tactics, just 17% plan to introduce email promotions, and 23% special offers, suggesting a disparity in understanding between marketers and their audiences.

‘The Eyes & Ears of Digital Marketing Survey’ was conducted by Dynamic Markets, on behalf of Coremetrics in November 2008.  The digital marketing survey was conducted amongst middle and senior marketing managers responsible for e-commerce sites of large retail and wholesale companies with more than 250 employees.  100 respondents were surveyed in the UK, France and Germany, totalling 300 respondents.  The consumer survey was conducted among 1,000 adult consumers, aged 18+, in the UK, France & Germany, totalling 3,000 respondents.”

Straight from direct source: © Netimperative

Digital World, Digital Life

New research out: More than half of all adults who meet online end up meeting face to face

Market researcher TNS Global did the study, which showed that six out of 10 adults met up with an online “friend.” It was quite a big survey too, with some 2,500 UK respondents out of  27,000 participants across 16 countries, so the data’s a good indication.

The study, Digital World, Digital Life, revealed a massive proportion of users doubt the true identity of their online friends, with 37% of respondents admitting they cannot be sure of an internet contact’s identity.

So, not so much social  networking, as just networking, then.

Boring online stats

There’s no real purpose to this.

It’s just a load of new figures that are out. Someone might find them useful.

So, what people do when they go online…

1. Use a search engine to find information 80%
2. Use online banking 76%
3. Look up the news 75%
4. Pay bills 66%
5. Look up the weather 62%
6. Visit a brand or product website 62%
7. Use a price comparison site 60%
8. Research a product/service before buying 60%
9. Watch a video clip 55%
10. Listen to an audio clip 44%
11. Participate in an online auction 39%
12. Visit a social networking site 37%
13. Look at property for sale or rent 36%
14. Look at sports scores and information 35%
15. Download music 32%
16. Share photos 33%
17. View or contribute to a forum 29%
18. View or contribute to a message board 26%
19. Sell something 22%
20. View or contribute to a wiki 19%
21. View or contribute to a blog 16%
22. Visit an adult-only website 16%
23. Advertise something 15%
24. Use a chatroom 13%
25. Download a film 12%
26. Download a podcast 11%
27. Visit a business networking site 10%
28. Use an online dating website 8%
29. Contribute to a blog 7%
30. Share videos online 7%
31. Enter a virtual world or community 7%
32. Don’t know 1%

… although I love the fact that 1% are online, not knowing what the hell they’re doing.

 

Source: Digital World, Digital Life, TNS 2008 (27,500 participants)

… Just another manic Monday…

Monday 8th December is set to be the biggest day of online retail for the UK.

According to our friends e-Digital, who have been researching for the IMRG e-Customer Service Index (quite a name, by any standards), around £320m will be spent during the course of the day.

This ties in pretty neatly with a different blog I wrote this week, where I explained that although the growth of online spending will not be as large as previous years, it’s still very much overshadowing offline retail.

That aside, with this research comes the surprising insight that people will be springing out of bed and rushing to their computers on Monday… Whereas I will have done my online shopping over weekend and will be having a lie-in before work.

Strange Questions

One of the reasons why I love the end of the year so much is the fact that everyone starts churning out random yearly reports.

Following on from my recent post about the terrible top searches queried on Yahoo, today sees Ask.com releasing their query-question data. As with Yahoo, the UK once again displays a wonderful cultural sophisitication and completely plays up to the sterotype with which Europe, if not the world views us… The top question on Ask UK was… “Am I pregnant?”

The top ten results were also peppered with other such lovely gems like: “What’s the minimum wage?” and “Where can I get a cheap loan?” One question that narrowly missed making the grade was “How can I improve my libido?” Obviously, celebrity made the list, with (in all fairness, quite a good question), “Who is the Stig?”, but more randomly “Why is the sky blue?” also made the list.

I’m not sure about you guys, but I suddenly have a very vivid mental image as to what the core demographic of UK internet users looks like…

Decca Decisions

Some time ago, Decca Records made the decision to reject a little-known, Liverpool-based band called the Beatles. On reflection, this was a pretty silly thing to do, as John, Paul, Ringo and George went on to become one of the most successful and famous bands in history.  This is completely comparable against what is happening with UK businesses and the internet. 

A survey released today from the Chartered Management Institute shines a light upon the fact that unbelievably, IT sector employers are failing to harness online technology.

The report was created from questioning over 860 businesses, ranging from all sizes – 25 employees to over 10,000 – with the aim of examining the workplace where younger staff have grown up with the internet. 26% of staff aged 35 or under surveyed said their employers wait too long before adopting online technology that can help their businesses grow. 10% described their companies as dinosaurs in their attitude to technology.

77% responded that they access the internet for professional development and 64% say it helps them in their work, despite around 6 out 10 employers monitoring staff internet use, more than half blocking specific websites and 12% giving only limited access at allocated times.

The CMI suggested that organisations need to harness the confidence of younger individuals online as “Failure to do so will lead to the loss of top talent or let competitors build advantage through a better equipped and enabled workforce.”

At least someone recognises the issue here.

Guilt-Mail

Apparently, a great deal of us feel guilty to not responding to emails.

The email provider, GMX carried out some research this month and found that 41% of UK emailers worry about late replies or not responding to their mail. They also noted that the average Brit has at least two personal email accounts to deal with, and check them on average between two and three times a day. GMX are quoted as saying: “Pressure to keep on top of personal email is a major cause for concern for a great many Britons, who place a high importance on keeping in touch with friends and family…” 

Spam apparently also causes undue trauma, with the survey reporting that that 36% of emailers got stressed over unwanted email…

…. I don’t really know what to say to that.

Ask And Ye Shall Find

Once again, I return to an issue I’ve already mentioned before… The importance of websites realising that in order to be competitive, they have to move forward with user’s needs.

So, it’s with no great surprise that Ask, an old-school search engine, has opted for a total facelift and new approach to dealing with user searches. If you happen to be as old as me, you’ll remember that they did this before, back in 2006, when they gave their butler-image the sack. Now, after alread intoducing new applications, they’re going to be focusing upon being the search engine of choice for users who are asking direct questons. (eg. Is there no end to the talents of DigitalGeekUK? Will he ever be the next Bill Gates? Why have I read this far?!) Recent data from ComScore support this, as they found that Ask is more often used by people searching for specific answers to questions… (The clue is in the name)… Search Queries that use questions make up around 5% of searches on Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Live, but accounts for 15% of Ask’s searches. Sounds like a lot, but remember that Ask only has a 2% market share in online search!

So, it seems that Ask will be restructuring themselves around this as we well know that rivals are increasingly looking at ways to set themselves apart from Google in the competitive world of search. The new Ask site will be launched in the UK on October 20th, but is already live in the US. Sneak preview here, guys.

It looks a lot like Google, and doesn’t try to hide this fact, openly claiming to have “borrowed” design ideas from the mighty search leader. Ask also claim that the re-designed site will be faster, improve search results and produce more relevant results for the user.

Whilst they undoubtably have a challenging task ahead, it’s not all bad news. Even with such a small UK marketshare, the lastest figures from Neilson show that during August, 46m searches were conducted on Ask, which is roughly one in five of all people using a search engine. Maybe the figures will be even better this time next year?