Mobile phone websites see visitor numbers soar

Mobile phone websites are the fastest growing sector for UK visitors from PCs and laptops, according to the latest research from the Nielsen Company.con

Nokia
Nokia

Mobile phone websites saw a 58% increase in unique UK visitors from 7.7 million in July 2008 to 12.2 million in July 2009.

Nokia particularly saw strong growth in traffic, up 203% while Vodafone’s traffic jumped 91% and O2 rose 79%.

The sector has also been boosted by services enabling customers to recycle their mobile phone or cash. Envirofone.com experienced a 429% increase to 616,000 UK unique.

The controversial directory service 118 800, which offers UK mobile phone members, was one of the big contributors to traffic growth. The service only launched in June 2009 but the main way to opt out of the service is to visit the website.

The second fastest growing sector is “Food and Cooking” and it saw a 58% increase from 6.7 million unique UK visitors in July 2008 to 10.5 million in July 2009.

A driving factor in the growth was drinks brands, such as Ribena, Baileys and Coca-Cola.

Nielsen Online communications director Alex Burmaster says: “Ribena’s huge growth is reminiscent to what we saw a year ago with Walkers Snack Foods. Walkers was the fastest growing brand online at the time due to their “Brit Trips” promotion that offered discounts on British holidays and trips. The focus of Ribena’s site is collecting coupons for outdoor games and fun days out in the UK while the lion’s share of their traffic is down to their “Put their wellies on” promotional campaign.”

He pointed out that FMCG brands are becoming “increasingly savvy” at generating awareness an activity around their brand online.

Coupons and Rewards came in as the second ranked third for percentage increase of visitors.

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