Top 100 UK High Street Retailers Internet Traffic Compared
High street retailers are gaining more visitors to their websites than their online-only competitors, a new study shows.
The research and analysis gurus at Hitwise compared the 100 largest online high street stores, like Argos and M&S, with the 100 biggest web-only retailers, which include Play.com and the mighty Amazon.
According to the study, these high street retailers received a fifth more UK visitors last month than those companies operating only online.
Interesting stuff. More and more people are turning to the web to shop, but many seem to prefer the brands and shops they are used to in the real world.
I think this comes down to visibility - Marks and Spencer, Argos and other high street brands are put in front of consumers every day.
Their very presence in every town centre is an advert, it builds trust and recognition.
In order to compete, online businesses must increase their own visibility and this may not be as hard as it sounds.
As more people are spending time on the internet, web retailers can use pay-per-click, organic search engine optimisation and other web marketing tactics to increase consumer awareness.
If they market themselves carefully and enthusiastically, they can compete without a physical presence.
For those non-Brits, “high street” in the UK is kind of like saying “mall anchor” in the US. “M&S” is Marks and Spencer, kind of a midway shop between Nordstrom and, dunno, Belk. (I have a lovely M&S dress shirt in that classic English blue - quite old and still unfrayed!)
Anyway, good article. I am often amazed at how little effort major retailers put into their online presence, even if they don’t sell much. I have avoided stores where I could not check price/inventory before driving over.
Phone is too 1800’s.
-OT
Comment by Oliver Taco — August 10, 2008 @ 6:16 pm
Traffic in online marketing is very important, people who all doing online business they have to built the high quality website, the website should promote the product, the site should not take more time to open, and the traffic should be in high level.
Comment by agriya — August 13, 2008 @ 12:00 pm
Good quality traffic for your site is possibly the most important thing for a purely online site like our own as you can end up paying a lot for ppc and never get a sale if you get the wrong type of person visiting. We have found shopzilla and GoogleBase to be perfect when it comes to getting good leads as people chick through to a specific product rather than just through a generic keyword.
Also the reason high street shops are doing well online is because they can bombard you install with the web address and give customers the reassurance that there is a physical shop to go and complain to if something goes wrong.
Comment by Karl — October 21, 2008 @ 9:11 am