Hitwise shows us external trends in visitor and search behaviour, visitor and website profiling and website market share.

Market trends

• Peaks and seasonality for sectors/categories in the external online market.
• Are these peaks aligned with when we see demand internally? If not should we review when we schedule our activity?
• What search terms have driven overall trends?

Competitors

• Who are the top players are in the online market by sector/category?
• Who is gaining share and who is losing it by sector/category?
• What terms are driving competitor success and are they reliant on PPC?
• What channels do competitors rely on for traffic and how do we compare?
• Upstream and downstream websites (which websites are customers coming from and going to after they visit us?)

Search terms

• What are the most popular external search terms and who is getting traffic for them and how?
• What are the fastest growing search terms?
• Key findings- branded terms / success of searches / search sequence
• Which terms do competitors recieve traffic from that we don’t?