I thought I had written our final blog post before Christmas, but I thought this data was too interesting not to share! As the chart below illustrates, last week traffic to E Cards websites was up 11.8% on the equivalent week last year.

In addition to environmental concerns, it’s clear that the economic environment has contributed to this growth. Here is a list of the top 10 search terms sending traffic to the category for the 4 weeks ending December 20th, which includes 3 variations on the term ‘free’.

1. e cards (3.70%)
2. ecards (3.38%)
3. jacquie lawson (2.02%)
4. free e cards (1.96%)
5. free e cards (1.65%)
6. hallmark (1.59%)
7. e-cards (1.55%)
8. e cards free (1.00%)
9. 123 greetings (0.97%)
10. birthdays (0.93%)

The interesting thing about this list is the lack of branded terms. A similar top 10 for many other industries – online retail, for example – would be dominated by brand terms. The market is still clearly pretty open, with most people still making generic searches rather than opting for well known brands from the outset. However, the importance of brand terms has increased since last year, implying that the market is moving in a more branded direction.

The most successful brand this year has clearly been Jacquie Lawson. As the table below illustrates, it was the most visited E-Greetings site last week, picking up over half of visits to the category and ranking as the 95th most visited in the website in the UK overall.

Merry Christmas!

Robin Goad

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

Image by malik williams