O2 started taking orders for Apple’s new 3G iPhone yesterday, and as you would expect it experienced a spike in traffic to both its homepage and online shop. Unfortunately the surge in demand caused the carrier’s site to crash, although it is now back online. However, O2 is already out of iPhones, and its site is carrying a message requesting customers come back on July 10th to place their order. Carphone Warehouse, which also experienced an increase in traffic yesterday, has a similar message up on its site.

Looking at the chart above, its interesting to see how yesterday’s surge in traffic compares with the one last month (when the new mobile phone was announced). Last time both O2 and Apple experienced an increase in traffic, but yesterday traffic to the manufacturer’s site hardly increased at all.

This nicely illustrates how consumer behaviour changes between the information gathering stage and the point of purchase. During the June peak, 22.4% of people searching for iPhone went to Apple’s official iPhone site, while 14.0% went to www.o2.co.uk. This time, O2 has taken the top spot, with 23.5% of traffic, compared with Apple’s 18.7%. That said, consumers still need a bit of nudge: 90% of O2's traffic from the term 'iphone' comes from paid search, up from 50% last month.

Robin Goad

Robin Goad is Research Director, Hitwise UK. This piece was originally published on Hitwise analyst blog here.

Image by HardRockCamaro