Brits flock to money saving sites

Due to their Brit Trips promotion offering discounts on UK trips, Walkers Snack Foods is the fastest growing website over the last year, growing 2,575% from 17,000 UK Uniques in June 07 to 444,000 in June 08

The Top 10 also contains two coupon/reward sites (MyVoucherCodes and Fair Exchange), a shopping comparison site (FindStuff) and a classifieds site for jobs, cars and homes (Trovit)

UKs fastest-growing websites: June 2007 – June 2008

Source: Nielsen Online, UK NetView, home & work data, including applications

e.g. The Unique UK Audience to Walkers Snack Foods increased by 2,575% from 17,000 in Jun 07 to 444,000 in Jun 08

Alex Burmaster, Internet Analyst, Nielsen Online, said: “Sites tapping into consumer concerns about the economy, giving them the opportunity to save money, dominate the fastest growing list. Coupons and reward sites, classifieds and shopping comparison engines are obvious examples but Walkers Snack Foods is the fastest growing site of all due to their ‘Brit Trips’ promotion offering discounts on British holidays and trips around attractions, hotels and restaurants.”

Nielsen went on to provide an individual analysis for each of the fastest growing sites:

#1. Walkers Snack Foods

This might seem unrelated to consumer concerns about the economy but the site’s growth is down to ‘Walkers Brit Trips’, a promotion that offers discounts on British holidays and trips around attractions, hotels and restaurants. Saving money on holidays becomes more of an issue when times are harder.

#2. Trovit

Trovit is a search engine for finding relevant classified ads across different sites for homes, jobs and cars. These are key areas that people look at to improve their financial status in difficult economic times. Sites like Trovit that help people rent properties, buy or sell cars or find a better paid job should, therefore, continue to benefit from the wider economic malaise.

#3. FindStuff

When money is tight, FindStuff’s call to arms “find and compare anything, there’s always a sale somewhere” will have particular resonance with consumers looking to find the best prices. The site lets consumers compare prices that different retailers offer for the same or similar products.

#4. MyVoucherCodes

A central source of vouchers and codes that give consumers discounts on goods across various online retailers. A community of consumers sends in discount codes they find online, in magazines or newspapers, which retailers offer to drive sales on specific products. The site’s growth is based on tapping into two of the web’s hottest themes – communities and saving money.

#5. iSingles

The first break from the economy theme – unless people are on the hunt for richer partners – iSingles is the fastest growing online dating site in the UK and now the fourth most popular.

#6. UKTV Food

The website of UKTV’s food channel provides a wide array of content including recipes, promotions and further info about the TV programme. Interest in home cooking is likely to increase as another way of cutting costs in tough times. The site taps into the increasing popularity of online video to bring much of its content alive - further blurring the lines between TV and the Internet.

#7. Fair Exchange

Consumers are increasingly attuned to schemes giving something back – be it earning loyalty points or viewing advertising in return for the chance to win prizes – so sites like Fair Exchange do well when money is tight. Consumers earn points by responding to offers from advertisers which they redeem on the site for rewards or to play more games for extra chances of winning.

#8. Namesco

Namesco has two main offerings - domain name registration and a broadband line speed test. The potential shake-up of domain name addresses and the huge increases in personalized pages on social networks means consumers are more attuned to creating their own websites – hence the need for domain names. The growth of broadband advertising from more providers means consumers are checking out their actual line speed connection – hence the increasing popularity of Namesco’s test.

#9. Blinkx

Video is one of the fastest-growing online sectors and Blinkx is a video search engine allowing viewers to search across millions of hours of professional and consumer-generated video. The site also taps further into the social media phenomenon by enabling viewers to build customized video walls for their blogs or MySpace pages.

#10. Answerbag

Social media is represented again by Answerbag, a community of people asking and answering questions. The Internet enables consumers to increasingly turn to each other rather than traditionally recognized ‘authorities’ for solutions to questions and problems. ‘Taxes’ ‘credit’ and ‘economy’ are currently three of the site’s most popular financial categories.

How the most popular websites/applications have fared over the last year

Only six of the ten most popular UK websites have outpaced overall Internet growth (11%) over the last year. Two grew, but by less than this rate, and two actually experienced a drop in audience

Google Maps is the fastest-growing website (57%) amongst the ten most popular sites followed by YouTube (52%) and Wikipedia (41%)

Growth of UKs most popular websites/applications: June 2007 – June 2008

Source: Nielsen Online, UK NetView, home & work data, including applications

e.g. The Unique UK Audience to Google Search increased by 15% from 24.3 million in Jun 07 to 28 million in Jun 08

“In terms of audience numbers, it’s been a very mixed year for the leading websites and applications.  Whilst Google, Amazon and the social media players have outpaced overall Internet growth, Microsoft has had a very challenging time and represents a changing of the guard from the media behemoths to the more nimble specialists.

Their Windows Media Player and Hotmail properties have been casualties of the social media explosion – consumers streaming video directly on sites instead of using media players and increasingly communicating via Facebook rather than email. Their messenger service has a smaller footprint - reaching less of the overall Internet population - than it did a year ago, despite a slight upturn in audience.”

Source: www.nielsen-online.com