How Canadians Reach Retail Websites

Says Heather Hopkins on Experian: Hitwise:
Canadians are heavy users of search engines and as we see in most markets, Search Engines are the top source of upstream visits to retail websites. In the month of June 2010, one third (33.21%) of upstream visits to Shopping and Classifieds websites came directly from a Search Engine. But, that is down year over year. In June 2009, Search Engines accounted for 39.18% of upstream visits, a 15% decline. What is making up the difference?

The following chart shows the top sources of upstream Canadian visits to retail websites in the month of June 2010 compared to June 2009. As illustrated in the chart, we have seen a slight increase in visits from other Shopping and Classifieds websites (shopping comparison in particular), Social Networks and Business and Finance.

The largest increase among these top industries was from Social Networks, up 37% year over year. Last week, the top downstream Shopping and Classifieds websites downstream from Facebook.com were mainly Classifieds websites (eBay Canada, various Kijiji and Craigslist city websites). Also among the top 30 were Sears Canada, Avon Canada, Amazon Canada, Ticketmaster Canada, and Walmart Canada.

This is an interesting mix of retailers, and not necessarily those you'd expect to be getting the most downstream traffic from Facebook. Stay tuned for more on social networking and retailing in Canada.

TheFind Overtakes Yahoo! Shopping As No. 2 Shopping Search Engine

TheFind, which grew by 175 percent year-over-year according to ChannelAdvisor, recently passed Yahoo! Shopping to become the second largest shopping search engine (after Google) according to comScore’s measure of total visits to comparison shopping engines.

According to ComScore, TheFind is the fastest growing site in its category: #1 in repeat visits and #2 in overall visits. 

TheFind.com and the shopping sites it powers saw between 2.3 and 2.7 average visits per visitor, as compared with 1.9 average visits per visitor for the next closest competitor.

“Our formula is pretty simple: make it easy for people to find the things they want to buy, and without bias, show them every available purchasing option.” said Siva Kumar, CEO of TheFind.  “When you do that, people come back because they both trust you and like what they find.” 

TheFind continues to make key hires in engineering and marketing that will nearly double the company’s size by year end.  To meet its expansion requirements, TheFind this week also celebrated the opening of a new San Francisco office in the heart of the financial district and convenient to all of the Bay Area’s best public transportation.

Check LinkedIn for the latest on hiring at TheFind. http://www.linkedin.com/companies/thefind-inc  

About TheFind

Founded in 2005 and profitable since late 2008, TheFind makes it easy to shop for anything in every store, all at once.  TheFind is built on patented search and crawl technology, backed by Bain Capital Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Redpoint Ventures, and is headquartered in Mountain View, Calif. with offices in San Francisco.