More consumers flocked to the web sites of Target, Home Depot and Best Buy than any other retailer sites in March, in their eagerness for products needed for the new coronavirus sheltering-in lifestyle.
That’s according to data from Boston-based SEMrush, a data and trends analytics company with data for insights on web sites.
The top 15 retail web sites, based on highest site traffic in March and in descending order, were those operated by Target; Home Depot; Best Buy; Kohl’s; Macy’s; Walgreens; J.C. Penney; CVS; Gap; Gamestop; Nordstrom; Ulta; Poshmark; Victoria’s Secret, and Sephora.
The rankings reflect consumer shopping priorities to cope with COVID-19, which would be food and health products that could be purchased at Target; cleaning and home repair products at Home Depot, and electronic and tech accessories at Best Buy, for teleconferencing, working via computer and watching television.
Jcpenney.com increased 26.5 percent, urbanoutfitters.com saw a 25.31 percent increase in traffic, and gap.com was up 25.26 percent, indicating the demand for comfortable, casual and inexpensive clothing to lounge around the house.
Other retail web sites that saw traffic up in a range of just under 25 percent to about 21 percent were those operated by American Eagle Outfitters; Macy’s; Kmart; Guess; Footlocker; Shein, and Nordstrom.
SEMrush also found that Nike, Lululemon, Adidas, Under Armour, Puma, Outdoor Voices and All Yoga were the most-searched activewear brands in March. That reflects the many activewear labels offering versatile styles that consumers can both work out in, and hang out in.
Sweatpants search volume increased 21.8 percent from February through March, while loungewear search volume increased 233.33 percent for the same period.
Denim brands getting the most searches in March were, in descending order, Levi’s, Everlane, Lucky Brand, Wrangler, Good American, Joe’s Jeans, Agolde, Mother Denim, Citizens of Humanity and J Brand.
The most searched for luxury and designer brands in March, starting with the most, were Louis Vuitton, Balenciaga, Chanel, Coach, Tory Burch, Burberry, Versace, Dior, Prada and Valentino.
“Overall, search volume for luxury/designer brands has declined over the past couple of months,” SEMrush said in a statement. That could be due to stock market declines, affluent shoppers getting worried about their finances, temporary store closings and people shifting to other shopping priorities during the health crisis.
According to SEMrush, the most drastic decline in searches online in the past couple of months happened at Dolce & Gabbana, which was down around 63 percent. “Some brands were able to maintain a consistent search volume throughout the early months of the coronavirus outbreak,” the tech company said, citing Coach, Tory Burch, Dior and Prada.
Diane von Furstenberg was the only luxury/designer brand to increase search volume over the past couple of months, rising 22.35 percent, SEMrush noted.
SEMrush provides data on search volume, correlations, web site traffic from digital and mobile devices and digital trends. Comprised of more than 30 tools and collecting search data for 140 countries, SEMrush provides statistics, up-to-date information and data which can used for garnering insights. SEMrush provides search volumes for a number of keywords (search requests). The exact amount of searches for a certain month are available the next month, though SEMrush can provide approximations for keywords over the last several days for more urgent data pulls.