Consumer shopping behaviour in the weeks leading up to Christmas and over the holiday period gives us a good indication of how they will behave online in the coming year. If current Christmas activity is anything to go by then the online channel is set to enjoy another period of growth.
Despite the slump in department store spending as reported by the Bureau of Statistics1 earlier in December, we are seeing positive signs online as more Australians turn to the web to purchase their Christmas items and do their shopping. Online retail remains particularly strong and comparisons with 2010 to 2011 figures tell us by how much this has grown.
In the week ending November 27 2010, the Experian Hitwise shopping & classifieds category recorded Australians visiting 28,415 sites. In the week ending November 26 2011, there were 6,870 more sites visited, making a total of 35,285 and a growth of 11 per cent.
Australians also appear to be frequent online shoppers. In the last year, we have seen an increase in total visits to websites within our shopping & classifieds category by almost 10 million. Comparing the week ending November 26 2011 with the week ending November 27 2010, site visits have grown from 103,746,257 visits to 113,347,184 visits.
Table 1 – Total visits to all categories within the Experian Hitwise shopping & classifieds category - week ending November 27 2010 - week ending November 26 2011.
In the fashion sector in particular, we’ve seen a dramatic rise in traffic to online retail sites over the last year. With the strong Australian dollar, consumers have turned to overseas retailers such as Asos to purchase fashion items at lower prices than available in traditional bricks and mortar stores. Asos has increased its visits share from 1.21 per cent to 4.41 per cent. That represents a significant growth of 271.75 per cent.
A number of new entrants have also performed extremely well and entered the top 10 most popular websites in our apparel and accessories category. Online only shoe store Style Tread opened its virtual doors in November 2010 and Cotton On entered the world of e-commerce in June 2010. Both feature in our top 10 most popular sites.
Table 2 - Most popular websites in shopping & classifieds category - apparel and accessories - week ending November 26 2011, compared with week ending November 27 2010.
With Morgan Stanley predicting that Australia’s fashion sales are expected to reach $3.4 billion by 20152 we can see that Australians are more than comfortable shopping for fashion online. As the online experience becomes more immersive, interactive and engaging, consumers will continue to go online to get the best deals on international and Australian brands. The task for retailers lies in developing a compelling online offering that not only entices consumers but encourages them to buy. The degree of success brands have in achieving this will separate the winners and losers apart over the next 12 months.
1 - http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/8501.0
2 - Australia Retail: Internet Retailing Boom 2.0, Morgan Stanley, June 27 2011
Matt Glasner is general manager of Experian Marketing Services. http://www.experian.com.au.