Some staggering statistics has been published by the Nielsen Co.’s online division — six out of ten online consumers arrive at e-retailers’ websites through direct type-ins of the retailer’s URL into the address bar of their browser (Google’s URL Suggests were probably included here as well).
Less than 10% of online retailers’ web traffic, on average, comes from search engines…
Nielsen found the majority of retailers’ web traffic (61%, on average) comes from people going directly to a retail site — consumers typing, say, Amazon.com into a browser address bar.
Nielsen’s findings are based on second-quarter traffic for 200 online retailers. The analysis shows that comparison-shopping sites, such as NexTag or Scripps Networks Interactive’s Shopzilla, collectively accounted for about 1% of traffic. Other referrals, such as affiliate programs or advertising (basically anything that wasn’t direct navigation, comparison referrals or search), accounted for the remainder.
Interesting information which once again emphasizes the importance of brand protection in online marketing, and while I am not at all convinced that the direct domain type-ins mean that the consumer hasn’t previously been pre-sold by an affiliate (or other online publisher/campaign), this is not something that I would like to draw merchants’/advertisers’ attention to. I think it is extremely important to emphasize two things in connection with the above-quoted statistics:
- Watch out for parasites who may be cannibalizing even on those direct type-ins [video here]
- Check your affiliate programs for trademark poachers that know how important trademarks are, and often target just your trademarks exclusively — including “www.brandname”, “brandname.com” and other domain-like keywords typed into SEs’ search boxes [more here]