Retailers Miss Out on Search Engine Potential

High Street brands enjoy greater online brand strength than their pure-play competitors but are missing significant opportunities for customer acquisition from search, according to online competitive intelligence provider Hitwise in its latest 'Retail Update'.

The research analysed search terms resulting in visits to retail web sites against the volume of visits the sites receive.

Nearly half (49%) of search terms sending visits to Shopping and Classifieds web sites are for traditional high street retailers that also have an online presence: roughly in proportion to their presence in the top 100 Shopping and Classifieds web sites, where 46 are high street retailers. Among pure-play providers or shopping search engines, brand strength is not as strong and these rely heavily on searches for product types. Only 16% of searches were for pure-play providers, who have 25 of the top 100 sites.

According to Senior Analyst Heather Hopkins, 'High Street retailers are facing increased competition from online providers. Recent earnings reports heighten the need for traditional offline retailers to acquire customers online. Firms find that shoppers who visit their web site before coming to the store convert better and so effective search marketing is becoming more and more important to both off and online growth'.

Hitwise also looked at the search terms sending visits to the top five Apparel and Accessories sites, and found that only a tiny proportion of searches (1 in 20) sending people to these sites also turn up one or more of their competitors in the same search. This is referred to as a 'gap''. 'Gaps represent missed revenue opportunities' says Hopkins. 'For example, 'trainers' and 'maternity wear' are among the most searched for products sending visits to fashion retailers. Next did not receive visits from either term in the four week period ending 21 May but offers both products on its web site'.

Hitwise monitors how more than 25 million Internet users interact with over 500,000 web sites across 160 industry categories each day. A privately held company with its HQ in New York City, it is online at www.hitwise.co.uk

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.

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