Visitor numbers to internet retailers drop for first time
Online ‘footfall’ looks like it is beginning to track the high street. The latest retail traffic figures for the UK show visits are down 0.5 pct a year ago.
The latest figures from Hitwise show that UK internet traffic to online retailers was down 0.5 pct in October 2008, compared to October last year. In-store, Experian’s Retail FootFall Index shows a fall of 2.2 pct over the same period.
Bleakly, Experian also reports a 31 pct rise in retailer administration orders and a year-on-year increase in retail business failures of 17.4 pct.
As ever, however, one retail sector’s bad news is another sector’s good news.”Up until now, online retail has been surviving the economic downturn, but this month’s data proves that the sector is not immune,” says Robin Goad, director of research at Hitwise.
“Despite the overall decrease in traffic to the online sector,” he added, “budget retailers are benefiting from the demands of more price-conscious consumers. UK Internet searches for second hand goods have increased 22 per cent over the last 12 months and, as a result, traffic to Classified Retailers increased by 47 per cent over the same period.”
“Supermarkets are also benefiting,” says Goad. “UK Internet traffic to supermarkets is up 10 per cent year-on-year.
“Although there has been a small increase in demand for online grocery shopping, the main growth area for supermarkets has been high-ticket consumer electronics goods… Online consumers searching for laptops and washing machines are increasingly ending up at sites operated by the likes of Tesco, Asda and Sainsbury’s. The supermarkets are driving this traffic by investing heavily in search marketing campaigns.”
And the reduction in online footfall looks set to continue. In the US, visits to online retailers have now been declining for eight consecutive weeks, Hitwise has found, with visits in the week ending October 25th down 3 pct on the year before.
