August 31 , 2010

Case study: Groupon.com and The Gap

Hitwise records campiagn success

Over the past year, group buying websites have surged in both popularity and number. The weekly market share of visits to a custom category of 81 group buying websites & aggregators has increased 416% for the week ending August 21, 2010 as compared to the same week the previous year. Groupon is currently leading the group buying websites in traffic and captured 50% of all visits within the custom category last week.

On August 19, Groupon offered a national deal with The Gap which offered purchasers $50 in merchandise for $25, a 50% savings. The national offers are a good strategy for group buying websites to pursue to attract a broader audience in locations where they may not have a presence yet. In this case, the discount for The Gap caused visits to Groupon.com to increase 37% from the previous day and 51% as compared to Thursday, August 12, one week earlier.

Interested purchasers were also visiting Gap.com immediately after Groupon.com, the share of downstream traffic from Groupon.com to Gap.com jumped to 4.18% on August 19th. This figure is strong from a customer acquisition standpoint because 53% of the visitors referred from Groupon.com to Gap.com were new, meaning they had not visited the website in the past 30 days.

Also aiding in the success of the promotions was high consumer awareness and shoppers actively seeking the discount. Searches for ‘gap coupons’ ranked 4th on August 19, 2010 among the search terms driving traffic to Groupon.com.