Australian web traffic and search patterns reveals consumer behaivour shifts during lockdowns

SYDNEY Australia, March 17, 2021: SimilarWeb, the world's leading traffic intelligence company, today unveiled its Australian Digital 100 Insights Report, revealing shifts in Australian consumer behaviour while dealing with last year’s coronavirus lockdowns.

The three industry categories which experienced the highest growth last year were Home and Garden (+67%), Health and Beauty (+54%), and Retail (+41%) as Australians adapted to life in lockdown.

Emmanuel Heymann, SimilarWeb Vice President for Australia and New Zealand, said that while Australia fared much better than international counterparts during the height of the pandemic, consumers and businesses were still forced to adapt to restrictions.

"With outdoor activity restricted and offices around the nation closed, many Australians turned their attention to gardening and home office upgrades to make the most of the situation,” he said. “As consumers adapted to the new 'locked in' lifestyle, brands that focused on strong digital-led acquisition strategies were able to capitalise on the shift in behaviour and secure exponential growth.”

Home office and garden upgrades
As Australians found themselves unable to leave their homes at the height of the pandemic, and with many suddenly forced to work from home, SimilarWeb’s analysis found home gardening and home office upgrades were the most popular projects to undertake with the category achieving the highest year-on-year traffic growth.

DIY health and beauty
With hairdressing salons, gyms, and beauticians closed for large parts of the year, many Australians turned to DIY self-care options with the Health and Beauty sector recording the second highest growth in traffic.

Interestingly, ‘K Beauty’ emerged as an extremely popular trend with websites dedicated to Korean beauty products seeing incredible growth. Stylevana.com – a site specialising in ‘K Beauty’ products – grew more than 900 times in 2020, making it the fastest growing brand in the sector, while nudieglow.com, another K Beauty site, grew by 264%.

Digital retail
As previously bricks and mortar retails rapidly shifted operations online, digital retailers experienced the third highest year-on-year traffic growth. This was largely driven by online toy stores, as parents sought creative ways to keep children entertained while in lockdown.

But wait, there’s more! As people spent more time in front of the television, the online stores of informercial channels such as itvsn.com.au (123 per cent) and globalshop.com.au (293 per cent) also saw significant growth.

“We’ve seen the pandemic change online consumer behaviour entirely – it forced even the most traditional businesses to go online,” Heymann said. “As a business, when you first go online it can seem like a jungle. Our data helps organisations contextualise and understand their market, the players, and the trends driving the category.”

The Top Ten
SimilarWeb’s Digital100 Insights Report analysed the web traffic of Australia’s most popular websites, revealing the nation’s fastest-growing brands across ten industry categories. From Apparel to Automotive and everything in between, here are the brands that clocked in at #1, by percentage growth, in each of the ten categories:

• Apparel — Youandall (+5024%)
• Automotive — Mycar (+312%)
• Insurance — Budget Direct (+33%)
• Banking and Lending — Southern Cross Credit Union (+195%)
• Universities — University of the Sunshine Coast (+873%)
• Publishers — Channel News Asia (+276%)
• Consumer Electronics — manscaped (+1376%)
• Retail — Toymate (+318%)
• Beauty — Stylevana (+92489%)
• Home and Garden — elivingfurniture (+1225%)

"Digital has well and truly become the primary way we engage as a society – whether that’s with friends and family via video conference, streaming entertainment, remote work and learning, or shopping online,” Heymann said.

“Before 2020, a digital presence was for many businesses a ‘nice to have’, but last year accelerated the shift toward digital-first. The fastest growing Australian brands were those who responded best to these new consumer demands.”

For more SimilarWeb rankings of the fastest-growing websites in the world, visit https://www.similarweb.com/top-websites/.

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