13
2009
Content driven websites receive 73% more traffic than transactional ones
The chart on this slide illustrates the percentage of all UK Internet visits accounted for by the largest and most significant online categories – and how this situation has changed over the last three years.
As you can see, there are a number of categories that have significantly increased their share of visits – and therefore UK online time spend – over this period. They are: Entertainment sites (which includes the likes of YouTube and iPlayer), Social networks and forums (a category that is dominated by the likes of Facebook, Twitter, et al.), and News and Media (which includes broadcast news sites such as the BBC, ITV and Sky, as well as newspaper and web only news sources). Over the same period, the share of internet visits going to a number of other categories has declined. In particular: Shopping and Classifieds (i.e. retail websites), Business and finance (a category that includes banks, insurance, utilities and telecoms), and Travel.
If we look at it another way, the picture becomes even more clear. The chart below illustrates the share of UK Internet visits going to two even broader online categories drawn form the major categories on the previous graph. The blue line includes Shopping and Classifieds, Business and Finance and Travel; I’ve called this transactional sites. The orange line includes the major areas of content driven sites, i.e. Entertainment, Social Networks and Forums, News and Media, and Lifestyle (which included niche content sites and blogs).
Going back 3 years, you can see that these two broad categories attracted similar amounts of Internet visits. In fact, in July 2006 transactional sites accounted for 5% more UK Internet visits than content driven ones. But fast forward to the present, and the picture is very different.
During July 2009, content driven sites picked up 73% more UK Internet visits than their transactional counterparts. This means that an increasing proportion of online time is spent browsing content, communicating and networking, rather than buying things. Clearly this is long term trend, but the falls in consumer spending that are a consequence of the recession have clearly helped to increase the gap over the last 12 to 18 months.
This data chimes nicely with the findings of the latest Ofcom Communications Market Report. It concluded that the communications market has not been particularly harmed by the recession, and that ‘the internet and TV is regarded as a higher priority than almost anything except food.’ Hitwise would agree with this analysis but, although people are using the Internet more than ever, the way they use it and the sites they visit is constantly changing. In particular, the above charts show that just because people are using the web more, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are spending more money online..
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Thanks for sharing Robin. Content has always been king although often forgotten by many players. The insights provided here offer a cast iron argument for investing in content.
In the depths of a bad recession, these trends are what you’d expect to see. Eyes turn to free entertainment as spending is cut.
It will be interesting to see whether the trends can be used to forecast the state of the economy.
The lines crossed over just before we officially entered the recession. When we exit, perhaps the gap will start to close again.
Excellent summary demonstrating the benefits of having a content rich website. Thank you for making this data available.
Very interesting insight! I loved the Xmas shopping peaks reflected by the Xmas travel slumps.
Could I ask, when you say all visits, does this include mobile too? I’m not sure of what impact it would make, but every new phone these days boasts direct links to Facebook, Twitter and the like, whereas you don’t see many with ‘fully integrated Amazon’ apps do you?
I realise too that the numbers are percentages so the comparison is better, but does that mask the increase of internet users since ’06? Has that increase been driven by younger segments (without credit cards) or much more mature users (not comfortable with online shopping)?
Are you at liberty also, to share which metric the percentages are based upon? Unique visitors would seem to tell a different story than say PVs or timespent perhaps?
Obviously the recession will have a direct effect, but it feels it’s a little simplistic if that’s the majority factor here.
Sorry to ask a lot of questions, this post really got me thinking!
Gap Widens Between Transactional and Content Site Visits
Interesting data from Hitwise indicates that content-driven websites get a whole lot more traffic than
Fascinating stuff, as ever.
Am wondering how these trends might affect news and media organisations making an online retail/e-commerce play.
e.g. are internet users steering away from transactional only sites but would be happy to make a purchase on a content provider’s site?
Thanks for all the comments. To snswer a few questions:
@Matt
The data doesn’t include mobile, but I would expect the ratio to be even higher if it did, as mobile commerce remains a pretty small market.
Regarding the number of actual visits, unfortuantely we don’t publish UVs. As you say, the %s allow us to makle the comparison of shifts in behvaiour – we’re certainly not saying that traffic to transactional sites has declined, just that content sites have grown faster.
In terms of the growth in Internet users, there has obviously been a lot of growth in 3 years. Although this has come from all areas, I would say that the % older users is now higher than before. Having done some other analysis on that, our fuinding show that older users are more likely to go tio transactional sites and are less likely to use the web for entertainment (which we would class as content using this definition).
@Laura Oliver
I’m not sure if users would be MORE confident purchasing from a content provider’s site, but certainly the line betwen content provider and transactional is becoming blurred from both sides (retailers are also providign more content to help wiht SEO / site stickinesss)
Robin
Well, this makes sense because we’re in a paradigm shift of users tapping the internet for entertainment versus just utility, which was the primary function/purpose people went online in the past. One would assume that there’d be significant increase in numbers of people using content/entertainment type sites in this landscape. How users will tap the web will either be as a utility or as a form of entertainment moving forward, so these numbers will probably even out a bit in the future. Though I think it’d be safe to say that content sites will draw bigger numbers overall than utility sites. Same world, different platform.
It’s a little hilarious that someone conducted a study to point out what everybody knows anyway: In the past XYZ recessions, entertainment has always sustained in comparison to everybody else. Nothing new or new to see here.
Thanks for the post Robin. Always enjoyed reading your blog.
For this post, I’m wondering if the increase in Broadband penetration in the UK also plays a part in the increase of traffic of content sites. Those with only dial-up connection would be unlikely to use content site such as youtube heavily. UK Broadband penetration increased from 69% to 95% between March 2006 to December 2008. (source: Office of National Statistics, as cited from http://www.websiteoptimization.com/bw/0902/). Feels like there may be some connections there too.
I could see people totally misinterpreting this if they didn’t read the article and look at the graphs. That’s one of the issues with clustering data. The point is well taken though– ecommerce is stagnant. I wonder how well that matches with other retail sales data?
Content seems to be driven primarily by entertainment and social networking. Can’t say that is too surprising. I wonder if there are a few sites driving those increases?
Kevin
Thank you for a great post Robin. Always enjoyed reading your blog. I wonder if the increased penetration of broadband in the UK also plays a role in increasing traffic to content sites. People with dial-up would be unlikely that the use of site like YouTube content significantly. Lets presume that UK broadband penetration has increased from 2006 until this year.
Very good summary showing the benefits of having a site of rich content and very interesting insight!. Thank you for making these data available. The Insight offers here an argument for investing in iron content. I really enjoyed the peak Christmas shopping season resulted in stockings Travel.