Strong Support for Nectar

According to the latest research from Nielsen//NetRatings, Nectar, the UK's newly launched loyalty scheme for Debenhams, Sainsbury's, BP and Barclaycard customers, attracted over 1.84 million visitors in its first month of launch. The websites of two of the partners in particular, Sainsbury and Barclaycard, experienced a 50% increase in traffic in September.

This places it 30th in the top UK websites for the month of September. Achieving such a large number of visitors in only one month is unprecedented and illustrates how offline promotional activities such as direct mail and advertising can generate website traffic when used effectively.

Analysis of the overlapping audience between the sites illustrates this point. Whilst Debenhams.co.uk and Nectar.com shared 55,000 visitors and sainsburys.co.uk and nectar.com shared 128,000 visitors in September 2002, Barclaycard.co.uk's shared audience with Nectar was much higher at 257,000 during the month.

65% of all visitors to Nectar.com were men in September 2002. This is a higher proportion of men than the other partner sites receive. 38% of the audience using the Internet from home to access Nectar.com were over 50 years old, with the biggest proportion of the overall audience being made up by people aged 65 and over.

In terms of income levels, one third of all visitors earn over £30,000 p.a. 16% earn £50,000 and over, indicating that these schemes are of value to people with more disposable income.

Tom Ewing, Analyst at Nielsen//NetRatings comments '1.8 million visitors is an excellent performance for any e-commerce or loyalty scheme site, let alone one that's only just launched. Previous points-collection and loyalty schemes haven't set the web on fire but Nectar's success shows that with big-brand involvement the demand is there. It also shows that consumers haven't given up on good ideas online, despite the dotcom bust - and it suggests that companies shouldn't either.'

All articles 2006-22 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas unless otherwise stated.

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