Small independent shops are punching above their weight when it comes to online sales while some corporates just aren’t cutting the mustard, a research group claimed today.

The facts:

Internet Search Metrics (ISM) searched the internet for popular consumer items and found that not only did independent shops dominate search listings, but some high street chains were practically invisible.

There were just under 20m searches on Google for the keyword ‘laptops’ during June, of which 81.2% of resulting traffic was shared by just 10 companies. Indie brand Laptops Direct got the lion’s share with 32.5 per cent while the only high street brand to appear in the top 10 – PC World – attracted just 4.7 per cent. 

The group warned corporates that their online marketing strategy (or lack of one) was to blame. Niche online-only retailers were far more effective at pulling in the traffic, it said.

A further search for HD televisions revealed a similar pattern. Searches for the new products have increased by almost a third since November, but only Tesco Direct is succeeding in winning a share of the higher demand online.

Just 0.14 per cent of visitors managed to find high street giant Comet through a Google search in June, according to ISM’s report.

They said:

"These figures are not isolated," said Jonathan Brech of ISM. "Across the retailing sectors we are seeing established retailers, with significant marketing budgets, fail to make an impact in internet search.

“They are still failing to understand how to market themselves online, and as a result are losing significant revenues to independent and internet-savvy retailers."

We say:

This is great news for small shops struggling with offline sales. Getting a good an easy-to-use website is a top way to increase sales. Be quick before the corporates wake-up.

There are a couple of caveats to this story. One is that Google is not the only search engine (it’s true!), the other is that high street brands command higher loyalty than web-only shops, and therefore many less experienced surfers opt to write the domain name directly into their address bar rather than search for what they want.

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By News Desk  on   Aug 11,2008

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Keywords

websites    online marketing    small business    Tesco    retail    high street   

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