HITWISE UK FLOWERS UPDATE:  

UK Internet visits to Flower websites at highest ever peak in February 

London, 6 March 2008 Hitwise, the leading online competitive intelligence service, today reveals that February was a bumper month for the Flower sector due to Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day falling so close together this year. UK Internet visits to flower delivery websites were at their highest in February, traditionally the busiest month of the year for this sector, than the previous three years. The busiest days for the industry were Tuesday 12 February and Friday 29 February, with visits 38% higher on Friday 29 February compared with Tuesday 12. 

Interflora (www.interflora.co.uk) and Tesco Flowers (direct.tesco.com/flowers) continued to dominate the Flower sector in the UK as the number one and two flower delivery websites over Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day. Collectively the two websites captured 41% of visits to a custom category of the top 25 flower websites in February 2008, up from 36% last year. Asda Flowers (www.asda-flowers.co.uk) was the fastest growing website, with visits increasing by 39% year-on-year to rank as the fourth most visited flower website.

‘Interflora’ was the most searched-for term and accounted for one in five visits to the top 25 flower websites, followed by the generic term ‘flowers’, which accounted for one in twelve searches in the four weeks ending 1 March 2008. Searches for ‘flowers’ were down by 12% from Mother’s Day in 2007, although searches for ‘mothers day flowers’ have increased by 13%.

Web-based email was an important factor in sending traffic to flower websites for Mother’s Day this year.  Traffic from web-based email in the week ending 1 March 2008 was double the amount driven during the week of Valentine’s or Mother’s Day last year. Traffic from Social Networking websites to the Flower sector was at its highest ever peak over Valentine’s week, with UK visits also at their highest level since Christmas.

Top 10 Flower websites (based on a custom category of the top 25 Flower websites), ranked by market share of UK Internet visits, week ending 1^st March

Top 10 Generic and Branded search terms sending traffic to a custom category of the top 25 Flower websites in the UK over the four weeks ending 1 March

About Hitwise:

Hitwise is the leading online competitive intelligence service. Only Hitwise provides its 1,400 clients around the world with daily insights on how their customers interact with a broad range of competitive websites, and how their competitors use different tactics to attract online customers.

Since 1997, Hitwise has pioneered a unique, network-based approach to Internet measurement. Through relationships with ISPs around the world, Hitwise's patented methodology anonymously captures the online usage, search and conversion behaviour of 25 million Internet users. This unprecedented volume of Internet usage data is seamlessly integrated into an easy to use, web-based service, designed to help marketers better plan, implement and report on a range of online marketing programs.

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