Compete recently completed an analysis showing early signs of the travel industry’s recovery based on overall site traffic to industry websites. Compete has used its ability to identify unique consumers to calculate annual unique volumes from 2007 to 2009. In summary, hotel and cruise showed signs of recovery starting in early 2009, while the recovery for air and car rental first appeared mid-year.

Continue reading “Travel Industry Rebound Based on Site Traffic: The Other Side of the Coin” »

CES 2010 has come and gone, but perhaps the biggest consumer technology announcement that week came before CES even kicked off, with the announcement of Google’s Nexus One on January 5^th. This new device ensured that the Google brand would be in the CES news coverage all week long.  Nice job grabbing some attention early!

However, not all of the initial news was promising for Google and the Nexus One.  While the handset has received very positive reviews among consumers and professionals, commonly citing it as the best Android device by far, there have also been complaints.  These ranged from things like 3G connectivity to customer service problems, a new issue for Google to think about as it enters the world of consumer electronics.

Continue reading “The Nexus One – Google’s Next (But Likely Not Final) Frontier” »

We’re at the height of the 2010 cruise wave season and there is still time for marketers to squeeze out incremental bookings by tweaking their online strategy.

Last week, Compete and Google co-presented a webinar based on a recent study of online cruise shoppers and bookers. Using Compete’s dataset of the online behaviors of 2M US consumers, the study examined the online travel-related behaviors of people who visited a cruise line site between January and June 2009. We also surveyed 198 people who visited a cruise line website but did not book a cruise online during the period to better understand their preferences, attitudes, and offline behaviors.

There are two key findings from our analysis of cruise bookers’ search behaviors:

1. Search referrals start impacting decisions as early as 2 months prior to a booking.
2. Non-brand search terms are important to consumers. We found the highest propensity to book (6% booking rate) among cruise shoppers who search on a combination of branded and non-branded terms.

Continue reading “Search is Integral to Driving a Wave of Cruise Bookings” »

On 1/26, Compete’s CMO,  Stephen DiMarco, posted a blog on Media Post’s Online Metrics Insider about how  “the precision of online media is both a blessing and a curse for marketers. Left unchecked for way too long, online advertising has been overrun by tactics and success measures that are singularly suited for direct marketers and are not so effective for brand builders.”

Read DiMarco’s full post.

The Compete Online Shopper Intelligence study provides powerful insight into the complete online shopping experience. Please contact Matt Pace at mpace@compete.com or Debra Miller at dmiller@compete.com for more information.

According to a 2008 Rosetta study, in April of 2008, less than 1/3 of US e-retailers had a Facebook page.  By November 2008, that number had doubled.  Last quarter, Softpedia reported that 86 percent of US online retailers have a Facebook page, and they expect that number to reach 99 percent soon.  With the vast majority of online retailers flocking to Facebook and other social media sites, the question I have to ask is: are consumers paying attention?

According to the Q3 Compete Online Shopper Intelligence study, consumers have been slow to embrace social media as a shopping resource.  Social networking sites were ranked as the least used online shopping resource; 60 percent of all consumers surveyed said that they do not use social networking sites while shopping online.  When questioned further, an even larger percentage said that they never visit retailer pages on Facebook or follow retailers on Twitter.

Continue reading “Consumers Slow to Embrace Social Media As Shopping Resource” »

So, BC, or Before Compete, I worked for a large Media company in their Distribution Group. Therefore, I was not overly surprised when I received a News alert on New Year’s Day telling me “Scripps Networks Pulls Channels from Cablevision Systems.”

Surely, however, the 3+ million New York, New Jersey and Connecticut Cablevision subscribers were much more surprised when they tried to turn on the popular Scripps Networks—Food Network and HGTV—New Year’s Day to a message telling them the content was no longer available.  What is particularly interesting to me is the way both Cablevision and Scripps took to the web to garner support from their customer base as we’ll see below.  To reference an old saying, “Customers just want their…Food Network and HGTV…back.”

Continue reading “Online Food Fight: Scripps vs. Cablevision” »