Retail Traffic Down for Eighth Consecutive Week

First declines in traffic to online retailers since June 2007 

New York, N.Y. — Oct. 28, 2008 — U.S. visits to online retail Web sites have declined for the eighth consecutive week, according to Hitwise®, an Experian company. U.S. visits to a custom category of 500 retail Web sites declined 3 percent for the week ending Oct. 25, 2008, compared with the same week the previous year. The Retail 500 Index accounted for 2.92 percent of all U.S. visits for the week ending Oct. 25, 2008. In 2007, that figure was 3 percent.

As financial concerns have increased significantly, these declines are the first drops in retail traffic this year and reflect the reaction of consumers who have decreased spending in the current economic climate. Visits to the Retail 500 Index increased 14 percent during June through August 2008 compared with the same time in 2007, but then declined 4 percent in September 2008.

“These declines have strong implications for the upcoming online holiday season as well as offline sales. Everyone is aware of the role that the Internet plays to influence offline sales through research, so this slowdown may indicate a further ripple effect in sales in retail locations,” said Heather Dougherty, research director at Hitwise.

Top retail categories

Health and Beauty, Grocery and Alcohol and the House and Garden categories experienced the largest growth year over year among the product categories. The Music category saw the biggest decline in visits (21 percent) among the product categories for last week. The Computers category saw an 18 percent decline, followed by Ticketing, with a 15 percent decrease in visits. Toys and Hobbies and Video and Games Web site visits dropped 10 percent, respectively.

About Hitwise

Hitwise, an Experian company, is the leading online competitive intelligence service. Only Hitwise provides its 1,500 clients around the world with daily insights on how their customers interact with a broad range of competitive Web sites 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 behavior 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.
 
Hitwise, an Experian company (FTS: EXPN), www.experianplc.com, operates in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore. More information about Hitwise is available at www.hitwise.com.
 
For up-to-date analysis of online trends, please visit the Hitwise Intelligence-Analyst Weblogs at http://weblogs.hitwise.com and the Hitwise Data Center at www.hitwise.com/datacenter.