Memorial Day weekend is a popular time for home improvement. The Hitwise Shopping and Classifieds – House and Garden industry typically sees a lift in the week leading to the long weekend and this year was no exception. Visits to House and Garden websites were up 5% for the week. Home Depot, the #1 website in the category saw visits rise 13% and Lowes, the #2 site, saw visits rise 8%.
Last week, these two home improvement giants issued earnings reports. There was much talk about California in those reports as Home Depot was seen to have suffered as a result of a high foreclosure rate in California.
Looking at Hitwise demographic data for Home Depot, we see that the top five states making up visits to Home Depot in the past four weeks were Texas, California, Florida, New York and Pennsylvania. The following chart shows the share of visits to www.homedepot.com by state in the most recent four week period compared to the same four week period a year ago. As you can see, the share of the site’s visits from California are down 21% while Texas and Florida are each making up a 10% larger share of visits.

This data supports what we saw in the earnings reports – weakness in California hurt Home Depot. California made up 7.35% of visits to Home Depot, compared to only 5.10% to Lowes. So while visits from California were down to both retailers, it didn’t have the same effect on Lowes as on Home Depot.
Both Lowes and Home Depot saw strong growth year over year from Texas, Pennsylvania and Florida. Marketers looking for growth areas might be interested in targeting these growth markets, particularly in this bleak retail climate. Also, the same analysis could be done for any sector to find pockets of strength.