Shaky Stock Fuels Interest Online

Shaky Stock Fuels Interest Online

As stocks tumbled in the United States due to a surge in oil prices, online activity in the stocks and shares sector soared. New Zealand internet users flocked to find out the latest news or to trade stock on August 3, just as the stock market in the US was experiencing turbulence and loss in altitude. Many New Zealand based websites reaped the benefits of this market uncertainty, rising considerably in the ranking statistics on this day.

Access Brokerage (www.accessbrokerage.co.nz) was one such site that registered a significant jump in traffic. Access Brokerage is a member of the New Zealand Stock Exchange, providing share broking services and stock market information to retail investors. Offering up-to-date figures, results and news, Access Brokerage took full advantage of increased interest in the market. The site rose from 199th position in all New Zealand websites on August 1, to an impressive 36th position on August 3. On this day Access Brokerage also rose to claim the number one position in the Business and Finance - Stocks and Shares category, edging out the second placed Yahoo! Finance (finance.yahoo.com).

The New Zealand Herald's StockWatch (www.stockwatch.co.nz) website recorded similar increases in rankings in this time period. A subsection of the New Zealand Herald's online version, this site offers articles, market analysis, and results. Users of StockWatch can trade online, create portfolios and use e-mail alerts to monitor stock prices. These services and information were no doubt in demand by Internet users at the start of August, as the site rose from 200th most popular New Zealand website on the 1st of the month, to 45th position on August 3.

The official website of the New Zealand Stock Exchange (www.nzse.co.nz) also witnessed success, becoming the 60th most popular local website on August 3, increasing its ranking position from 331st on August 1.

This increased online interest in the stocks and shares market helped ShareChat (www.sharechat.co.nz) break into the top 100 New Zealand websites on August 3, rising from 118th position on the 2nd, up from 269th the day before. ShareChat provides New Zealand market investors with news, features, forums, financial resources, market information, sharebroker profiles, and educational features.

In a similar manner New Zealand Herald Portfolio (portfolio.nzherald.co.nz) rose from 93rd position in the local Business and Finance category on August 1, to clinch the 26th spot on the August 3. On this day, five New Zealand websites focusing solely on stocks and shares information appeared in the top 30 websites of the Business and Finance category.
Fast Mover
Virtual NPC
www.virtualnpc.co.nz
Position Last Month: 3999
Position This Month: 101
Positions moved: 3898

Success has not been confined to the playing field this NPC season, with the Virtual NPC website notching up victories of its own online. Rising from 919th most popular New Zealand website for the week ending July 24, to the towering position of 28th in the latest weekly rankings for August. Achieving a top 5 spot in Sports websites, and holding the no.1 position in the Sports - Fantasy and Entertainment - Competitions categories this week, Virtual NPC's season so far has been very impressive. While Virtual NPC is attracting more visitors, they are also staying longer, with the average visit time rising from 2 minutes 16 seconds in June, to 7 minutes 55 seconds in July, to a lengthy 9 minutes 51 seconds in August.

Created by Air New Zealand and the New Zealand Rugby Football Union, Virtual NPC is a tipping competition where players can win prizes and game points. The points will be automatically converted to Air Points at the end of the season. Not surprisingly, the Air New Zealand (www.airnz.co.nz) website features in Virtual NPC's clickstream data, ranking 10th in sites visited before Virtual NPC, and 17th in sites visited afterwards.

Bookmark data also shows visitors indicating their intentions to return to the site in August, with 8.55% of them adding this website to their bookmarks in the month of July. However, the first week of August sees this figure slip slightly, with bookmark statistics registering 7.98%.

Search Terms Analysis: Shopping and Classifieds - Books

This month our Search Term analysis focuses on the Shopping and Classifieds - Books category, offering an insight into how New Zealanders are searching for, and finding, online bookstores.

Dominant category leader Amazon (www.amazon.com) featured prominently in the Shopping and Classifieds - Books category's Search Terms data, boasting four of the top 10 category's search terms with 'amazon', 'amazon.com', 'amazon books' and 'www.amazon.com'. Collectively, these four Amazon search terms account for 42.53% of market share in this category. No doubt these search terms also led visitors to the United Kingdom version of Amazon (www.amazon.co.uk), which is second place in the category with a significant 12.58% in rankings statistics.

Performing consistently at third position in the category rankings is the New Zealand online bookstore Real groovy (www.realgroovy.co.nz). The site recorded the fifth and sixth most popular search terms, with 'real groovy' and 'realgroovy' accounting for 6.01% and 5.87% of market share respectively.

Other popular search terms were 'abebooks' with 10.81%, 'whitcoulls' with 8.09%, and 'bookfinder.com' with 1.26% of market share.

Case Study

How a popular online food delivery service used Hitwise data to develop content and product offerings on their website.

An online food delivery service, which provides customers with a variety of cuisine choices, found that although the site was attracting many visitors, sales were not increasing accordingly.

Using Hitwise 'Clickstream' data, the food delivery service found that it was losing 15% of its visits to a variety of competitive websites - specifically 10% to Pizza Hut.

Hitwise 'Search Terms' data revealed that 28% of the top search terms in the online food industry were "pizza" related.

With these competitive and customer insights, the online food delivery service made several adjustments to its website to satisfy user demand, prevent churn and increase sales. Specifically, the site featured a pizza promotion on the home page, as well as an offer to accept any Pizza Hut coupon or promotion.

With Hitwise competitive insights the online food delivery service was able to diminish churn to Pizza Hut by 50%, and increase sales.

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