With Father’s Day rapidly approaching, retail marketers are tirelessly working to engage with moms and children to convince them that their product is the perfect gift for dad. Now that more and more consumers are shopping online, search trends can be incredibly predictive of buying behavior.
Last year, we posted about the movement towards personalization in Father’s Day gifts, a trend we discovered through Experian Marketing Services’ Hitwise . This year’s data shows that personalization is still an important trend, but less so than it was last year. Gifts.com and PersonalizationMall.com, both sites that specialize in personalized gifts, were the top two websites in Father’s Day search traffic last year. This year, Gifts.com has been replaced in the top spot by Real Simple Magazine, and PersonalizationMall.com is not even featured in the top ten.
Does this mean that people are less creative with their gifts this year? Not necessarily. They may just place higher value on the convenience of finding Father’s Day-specific gift ideas all in one place. All of the top 5 websites in Father’s Day search traffic this year feature “Unique Gift Ideas for Dad” posts on their front pages, a content strategy that is key to successfully gathering search traffic. Real Simple Magazine also unveiled a “Gift Guide” smartphone app during the 2012 holiday season, another piece of content which likely contributed to the brand’s newfound popularity in the gift-giving market. They also appeared on our list of websites for graduation gift searches.
Additionally, Hitwise identified the top search terms for the season. Not suprisingly, ‘fathers day gifts’ and ‘father’s day gift ideas’ were the top two search terms, with click rates of 12.39% and 6.99% respectively. Other terms that brought high click rates included ‘fathers day gift ideas from kids’ and ‘fathers day homemade gift ideas.’
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