More than a third of online shoppers are going offshore to make their purchases according to Web traffic research outfit Hitwise. Though the market is growing at over 20 per cent these missed opportunities are costing Australian e-tailers.

The latest news from Hitwise is that there has been a substantial increase in visits to shopping and classifieds websites by Australian Internet users, with year on year growth of over 20% between May 2004 and May 2005.

While this indicates sustained consumer confidence in making personal transactions over the Internet, Hitwise points to the 34.91 per cent of traffic heading off to global websites as an opportunity loss on an attractive demographic. Online shopping draws a youthful market with 28.73 per cent of users between the ages of 25 and 34.
Hitwise describes eBay Australia as the local heavy-weight in shopping and classifieds, with an overwhelming market share of 36.26 per cent in May 2005. In contrast, Amazon.com ranked third accounting for just 2.05 per cent of traffic.
Search Engine Marketing, particularly via Google is a vital component of any etailing strategy says Hitwise with sites in the category getting an average of 22.52 per cent of their traffic from search engines and directories.
In planning for search engine optimisation, e-tailers need to focus on brand names.

For example, in the Shopping and Classifieds category, Apparel and Accessories, 7 out of the top 10 search terms were brands. ‘Supre’, ‘Sportsgirl and ‘Rebel Sport’ were the top three search terms.