Looking at the most popular search variations for the term ‘iphone’ in April 2013 you can see that ‘iphone 6’ was more searched for than any other term accounting for 2.41% of all UK iPhone searches.

What’s fascinating is that despite the clear consumer interest in the iPhone 6 and iPhone 5S these search terms attract much lower paid click rates than the search terms for the established models including the iPhone 5 and 4S. You can see that typical iPhone searches have between 30-50% of their search clicks coming through from paid links and yet for the iPhone 6 and 5S the proportion of paid clicks is closer to 5%. What this suggests is that people are looking for organic content around the new iPhone including rumours, news, release dates and spec lists.

This also creates an opportunity for retailers though who are forward planning for pre-orders of the new iPhone model. Given the significant search demand for both the iPhone 5S and the iPhone 6 and the low paid rate it would be relatively easy (and cheap) for vendors such as Carphone Warehouse to encourage pre-orders or customers to sign up for information about the forthcoming handsets and increase prospecting lists by being an early mover in this space.

One of the quirks of iPhone search trends is that even though history suggests that the next model released will be the iPhone 5S the hype and expectation (at least through search) is about the iPhone 6. Looking at all search term variations over the last 12 weeks for the word ‘iphone’ you can see that the most popular model overall is the current iPhone 5 which accounts for 27% of all iPhone searches in the UK.

However the iPhone 5S only accounts for 3% of searches whereas the iPhone 6 accounts for 10%. Either, the UK hasn’t caught on to the Apple naming conventions or people are much less interested in the interim changes that will be made for the 5S and instead are looking ahead to the next generation phone that awaits in the iPhone 6.

We saw similar trends a couple of years ago when the 4S entered the market. In October 2011 consumers searched in their droves for the iPhone 5 convinced that it was going to be the next Apple release. Searches for the iPhone 5 accounted for 1 in every 1000 searches online and were five times higher than for the iPhone 4, only for Apple to release the iPhone 4S which by comparison seemed an anti-climax. History it seems is repeating itself with relatively few people searching for the iPhone 5S and much more attention going towards the iPhone 6.

If you want to find out more about Experian Hitwise data and how it can help your business please visit our website or follow us on Twitter for the latest data updates.

In 2012 the UK spent 37 billion hours online but if all of that time was distilled into a single hour, this is how it would look.

This year we’ve also widened the study to take into account the other English speaking markets that Experian Hitwise monitors in the US and Australia. What’s fascinating here is that although social media is the number one category across all three markets, compared to last year people are spending proportionally less time on social and more time on shopping and news sites.

22% of all time spent online in the UK in 2012 was spent on a social network, making up 13 minutes of every hour online. Across all three markets time spent shopping online grew year-on-year, but the UK emerged as the most prolific online shoppers, spending proportionally more time on retail websites than any other market. British Internet users spent 10% of all time online shopping in 2012, compared to 9% in the US and 6% in Australia. This was in part due to a bumper Christmas season where 370 million hours were spent shopping online, 24% higher than the monthly average.

Consumption of news content also increased across all three markets with Australian users emerging as the most voracious news readers. 6% of all time spent online in Australia in 2012 was on a news website, compared to 5% in the UK and 4% in the US.

Meanwhile the time spent on social media and email declined across all three regions. The US, which has been the most dominant market for social consumption in the last three years dropped from 30% of all time spent online to 27% spent on social networks and forums. In Australia time spent on social dropped from 27% to 24% whilst in the UK it dipped from 25% to 22% year-on-year.

It’s important to caveat that this data doesn’t include mobile visits made on 3G or 4G networks or app visits. Consumers are changing the way they interact online and the rise of mobile internet access means a lot more visits are being made on the move, particularly in social and email which accounts for the global decline in time spent online in the home and on wifi networks in our figures. As certain categories shift to mobile the online pastimes at home are changing with an increased propensity for users to visit entertainment, shopping and news websites.

To find out more about Experian Hitwise data or our new mobile proposition please visit our website or follow the latest trends on Twitter.

The study makes for a fascinating read and is well worth taking the time to go through fully but in essence the core findings of the paper were:

1. Paid search for branded keywords is ineffective because in the absence of paid links people will click on organic links instead.
2. Paid search for non-branded generic keywords is wasted because the people who are most likely to click on paid links are already brand advocates who would end up purchasing anyway.
3. Paid search does have limited effectiveness for attracting new customers to the brand but these are not necessarily profitable customers to target.

A lot of the criticism of eBay’s findings focuses on the fact that eBay is a massive brand with a very loyal customer base which is not the case for the majority of businesses trying to make money online. In eBay’s defence the paper is quite clear that they are only talking about big brands and according to eBay’s estimates the top 10 spenders in paid search account for 7.4% of total online advertising spend in the US. The argument here is do these huge brands need to spend so much money on paid search given the strength of their brand and loyalty of their customers?

To do justice to the three key points above would take a whitepaper in itself so I have chosen to focus just on the first point and the issue of navigational branded search. My contention is that even for the biggest brands paid search still has an important role to play in the overall marketing mix.

Navigational Search

The first main assertion made by eBay is that paying for branded keywords is unnecessary as users searching for ‘ebay’ are in fact using Google as a navigational tool with the intent to go to ebay.com (or ebay.co.uk in Britain). Having paid links for these terms simply intercepts consumers from clicking on an organic link. This is a perfectly legitimate assertion for simple brand terms such as ‘ebay’, ‘ebay.com’, ‘ebay login’ etc. Experian Hitwise data shows that for the 12 weeks ending 16 March 2013 over 95% of searches for the term ‘ebay’ resulted in a clickthrough to an eBay property.

According to the paper all branded search terms are navigational, as any search which included the term ‘ebay’ shows user intent to navigate to ebay.com. However, if we take a term like ‘ebay wedding dresses’ this is not navigational in the same way as a search for ‘ebay login’. The difference being that with ‘ebay login’ the primary subject of the search is eBay, but in ‘ebay wedding dresses’ the primary subject is the wedding dress, eBay is the secondary subject. The intent of the user in this case is to buy a wedding dress, and although they have the eBay brand in mind, that does not necessarily mean they are determined to buy from eBay.

Looking at the websites receiving traffic from the term ‘ebay wedding dresses’ in the last 12 weeks you can see that eBay and eBay Mobile account for 67% of the search clicks, but that a third of all traffic goes to other websites, in the case of idreamprom.com, JJ’s House and DIYdress the traffic is exclusively coming through paid search.

In this case the company is only receiving two thirds of available search clicks for its own brand term. Even for a huge brand like eBay, protecting the brand from competitor websites bidding on eBay’s terms helps to maintain a higher market share of search clicks. Especially when 40% of online users don’t even realise that the paid links at the top of the page are adverts, this is crucial for brands to be maximising return on their brand term.

The further point here is that paid search affords brands the opportunity to get two bites of the cherry at attracting a click. In doubling exposure on a search results page (the brand appears in both paid and organic ranking positions), the total percentage of clickthroughs across paid and organic increases.  Essentially, this is a 1+1=3 argument.  A brand that ceases to bid on its own name loses ground in the organic click space as a consequence.

To find out more about Experian Hitwise data you can visit our website or follow us on Twitter for the latest data updates.

A part of this growth is attributable to consumers who would historically have ordered takeaway on the phone switching to online as their preferred ordering method. The rise of aggregator sites like Just Eat have made ordering takeaway online much simpler and intuitive to the extent that Just Eat is now the biggest online takeaway vendor in the UK.

However, against a back drop of total Internet visits increasing by 20% year-on-year, the growth of visits to takeaway websites is more than three times that of the market average, suggesting that our appetite for takeaway is increasing.

So what is Britain’s favourite takeaway food?

One of the surprising nuances of the online takeaway industry is that there is very little correlation between what people search for and what they end up ordering. If we look at all UK Internet searches which included the word ‘takeaway’ including branded searches such as ‘dominos takeaway’ the vast majority of searches are for Chinese food.

In fact Chinese accounts for 62% of all takeaway searches, followed by Indian cuisine at 26% of the market and pizza and a rather marginal 5%. However, if we look at the visits to the top takeaway sites, over 40% of visits go directly to the leading pizza sites Dominos, Pizza Hut and Papa John’s.

This doesn’t take into account the visits that go to Just Eat, Hungry House and others where the consumer ends up buying pizza over another takeaway cuisine. So how do we account for this discrepancy that only 5% of takeaway searches are for pizza and yet over 40% of visits (and therefore orders) are for pizza vendors?

All in the branding

The answer is in the branding. Unlike Chinese or Indian food, pizza branding has evolved to produce three established players in the market. The brands are sufficiently well known that if people are hungry and want pizza they are much more likely to search directly for the brand than to search for takeaway pizza.  This is perfectly illustrated when you look at the top search terms driving traffic to the custom category of takeaway services sites in the last 12 weeks. All of the top 10 terms are branded, five of which are for Dominos.

I personally find it strange that no-one has successfully managed to launch a nationwide Chinese or Indian takeaway brand to dominate these markets in the same way that pizza is dominated by Dominos but that is beside the point. What is important to understand is how consumer behaviours differ between takeaway types and how to get a digital strategy to reflect these differences.

Pizza for example is going to be very difficult to compete against the big three brands on the common generic terms such as ‘pizza’ or ‘pepperoni pizza’ but there are always opportunities which will allow pizza vendors to differentiate themselves from the competition. For example only 60% of searches for ‘halal pizza’ in the first three months of 2013 resulted in a click to a website, meaning that 4 out of 10 people looking for a halal pizza couldn’t find what they were looking for. This represents a gap in the market for vendors looking to appeal to a growing niche market.

For Chinese and Indian food, with no prevalent brand to compete against, local search is imperative to get right, particularly for the terms which the local population are searching for. I wrote a blog a few months ago about Britain’s favourite curry but there are many regional variations which can be optimised for depending on what people want from their takeaway.

Understanding Audiences

At the heart of this is understanding audiences. There is no average customer for takeaways or for any commodity for that matter. The goal is to understand the specific needs of the customer and make sure your website perfectly matches the needs of the customer. There is a fascinating case study of Papa John’s where they targeted people who were hungry coming home from the pub rather than using heavily discounted offers. The right message to the right people at the right time really can work to increase sales.

To find out more about Experian data you help your brand you can visit our website or follow us on Twitter for the latest data updates.

1. 7% of all Easter searches include the word ‘when’. Easter Sunday is on the 31 March this year.
2. 16% of searches are for eggs. Tesco was the most searched for supermarket brand for Easter eggs followed by ASDA, Morrison’s and Sainsbury’s. However, of all searches for the term ‘easter eggs’ chocolate maker Cadbury is the biggest recipient of search clicks.
3. Demand is increasing for more specialised Easter eggs. Vegan Easter egg searches have increased by 53% since last year and searches for dairy free Easter eggs are up by 160% year-on-year.
4. The UK will spend 50 million hours online this Easter browsing travel sites and booking weekend breaks and holidays.
5. With Easter bank holidays coming up many Brits are looking to get away for a short weekend break. Devon, Dorset, Kent and Yorkshire are currently the most desirable getaway destinations within the UK.
6. For those wanting to go abroad this Easter the hot destinations for holiday breaks which have seen the biggest increase in search volume since Easter last year are Malta (up 59% year-on-year), Rome (+50%), Amsterdam (+28%)  and Dubai (+25%).
7. Last minute ski holidays are still on the agenda with Obergurgl, Rosiere and Zermatt the three fastest moving destinations compared to last Easter.
8. Last Easter travel websites were most reliant on email traffic on Wednesdays. Sending out your email offers on a Tuesday could help you get in ahead of the competition.
9. Online activity always decreases over bank holidays and Easter will have two on Good Friday (29 March) and Easter Monday (1 April). Ensure all your email campaigns go out well ahead of the bank holiday to ensure strong open and click through rates.
10. Londoners are the most likely UK inhabitants to take a holiday away over Easter. London Internet users are 7% more likely than the average consumer to visit a travel site during the Easter period.

Fast forward to February 2013 and online video now accounts for 5% of all UK Internet usage. The UK made over a billion visits to video sites last month, up by 16% year-on-year. Experian Hitwise did an online video report back in 2011 and since then visits to video sites are up by 70% which shows the rapid rate of change in such a short space of time.

What’s really interesting about online video is it is one of the few industries that people are actually increasing the amount of time they spend on each visit when they go to a website. The general trend that we have noticed in the last 12 months especially is that people are making more visits online but are spending less time per visit. This is representative of our fast-paced skimming culture that has evolved – if people can’t find what they want they will move on to the next website to find something to satisfy their demands.

Across all Internet visits average visit time is down by 20% year-on-year, and yet for online video you can see that the average visit time has increased from 15 minutes 23 seconds to 18 minutes 15 seconds.

In total the UK spent 323 million hours watching online video content in February 2013, 100 million more hours than were spent watching in February 2012. This represents a year-on-year growth of 45% showing not only are we making more visits to video websites, we’re also spending longer watching video content.

The question is how to benefit from this growth in video consumption? The data shows that e-commerce sites are among the biggest beneficiaries online, with 16% of all visits leaving video sites going directly to transactional websites. By using video content intelligently, brands are driving customers to their websites to buy their products.

If you want to find out more about Experian Hitwise data and how it can help your business please visit our website or follow us on Twitter for the latest data updates.

In January 2013 the UK made over 800 million visits to travel websites, a 42% increase from the visits made in December. The increase in interest fuelled the rise in the rankings for Thomas Cook (up 25 places from the previous quarter), Thomson (+15), Travel Republic (+12) and British Airways (+10). Budget airline Ryanair was the only travel brand not to increase its ranking in the top 50 this quarter, falling one place to 33 overall.

Post-Christmas shopping is usually dominated by big ticket items such as TVs, laptops, sofas, wardrobes and bathrooms so it was no surprise to see Currys, IKEA and PC World all rise in the rankings from last quarter whilst Homebase remained steady at 41 in the list.

To find out more about Experian Hitwise data you can visit our website or follow us on Twitter for the latest data updates.

1. 11% of all Mother’s Day UK searches include the word ‘when’. It’s Sunday 10 March so get cracking!
2. This week the UK will make 800 visits a minute to the Flowers & Gifts shopping category. In total a million hours will be spent shopping online for Mother’s Day gifts this week.
3. Visits to the Flowers & Gifts category will account for over 2% of total Internet shopping in the UK, higher than Valentine’s Day which just goes to prove no matter how much we love our partner, we love our Mums more!
4. The average online shopper has less time to spend looking for Mother’s Day gifts this year than last year. Average time spent on Flowers & Gift websites has declined from 8 minutes and 18 seconds to 6 minutes and 23 seconds.
5. Last year retailers which included the phrase ‘mother’s day’ in the subject line of their emails saw a 61% increase in transaction rates.
6. This year searches for gifts are five times more popular than flowers, although there is always a late surge in searches for flowers for last minute online shoppers.
7. People are looking to add a personal touch to Mother’s Day this year. Searches including the word ‘homemade’ have more than doubled compared to last year.
8. Demand for personalised and more unusual gifts continued to rise this year with increased volumes of searches including the word ‘unique’ (1.6% of all gift searches) and ‘unusual’ (1.3% of all gift searches).
9. With stretched budgets this year there has been a decrease in searches for expensive hampers (last year’s fastest moving gift) and a 10-fold increase in searches for novelty Mother’s Day items as a token gesture.
10. Stevenage remains as the Mother’s Day capital of the UK for a second consecutive year. Internet users in are 23% more likely than the average user to visit the Flowers & Gift category in March.

As more of our shopping is being conducted online events like Mother’s Day are getting bigger each year for Internet retailers. The UK now spends 10% of all time online shopping so it is no surprise that there will be 20% more visits to retailers for Mother’s Day this year than there was last year.

However, although overall more visits are being made the amount of time spent on site per visit is declining quite rapidly. This is in line with trends we saw over Christmas, where consumers are short on time and skimming through sites looking for the perfect gift. More than ever it is becoming imperative for brand to make onsite navigation as simple and intuitive as possible and to highlight offers clearly on the homepage to make the user experience as seamless as possible.

With only a few days to go until Mother’s Day consumers are looking for reassurance that if they order gifts online now that they will definitely be delivered by Sunday. Just like at Christmas, guaranteeing late delivery or offering click and collect services is a great way to secure last minute sales.

Year -on- year search activity has increased by 18% with over 400 million more visits going to search engines in January 2013 than in January 2012.

Usually after Christmas we see a drop in search activity as people return to their normal routines after the festive period. However, this year the drop off in visits to search engines between December and January has been marginal, which suggests 2013 is going to be another big year of growth online across all Internet activities. With more searches being conducted online, brands have an opportunity to understand exactly what their customers want through the searches they make. Those brands that can react quickly to changing consumer demand will be the ones that are ultimately successful in 2013 and beyond.

During January Google continued to see its lowest market share in the last five years, accounting for 88% of all searches made in the UK – a year-on-year drop of 3.18%. Microsoft Sites on the other hand, led by the Bing engine continued to see an increase in its market share by 0.20% to hit a new high of 5.19% – a year-on-year increase of 1.41%.

Clearly, Google still maintains a huge competitive edge over the other search engines in the UK market. There are seven times more searches conducted on Google Sites than on all the other search engines combined. However, this is encouraging news for Microsoft as Bing once again starts to gain some momentum and traction in the UK search market. Yahoo! and Ask Sites are also seeing a significant uplift in searches with a year-on-year increase of 0.99% and 0.68% respectively.

If you want to find out more about how Experian Hitwise search data can help your business please visit our website or you can visit our YouTube channel to watch one of our videos. Alternatively you can follow us on Twitter for the latest data updates.

Looking at the seasonality of searches for this niche type of insurance there are some very clear spikes throughout the year when online demand peaks. The five most popular weeks for temporary car insurance all corresponded with UK bank holiday weekends.

The peak of 2012 searches came in the week ending 2 June which not only corresponded with the spring bank holiday but was also immediately before the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee which boosted consumer demand. What this shows, is a clear correlation between bank holidays and a consumer need for temporary car insurance, which is useful for forecasting future demand. In 2013 key bank holiday dates fall on 29 March, 1 April, 6 & 27 May and 26 August. Further analysis of the key search days showed that the Friday before the bank holiday was the day when consumers were most likely to search for insurance.

Taking the analysis one step further, it’s possible to see the specialist websites receiving traffic from searches for temporary car insurance and then look at where in the UK demand is coming from for this insurance.

What emerges here is that temporary car insurance is very London centric. 1 in every 5 visits to a specialist temporary car insurance provider comes from a London Internet user, and Londoners are 50% more likely than the average consumer to visit these specialist websites. This makes sense as the cost of keeping a car in London is extremely high, and so borrowing a car and insuring it for a short time appeals to the London audience. This information allows insurers to be more precise in their targeting for new customers who demand these niche insurances.

To find out more about Experian Hitwise data you can visit our website or follow us on Twitter for the latest data updates.