On February 14, were you and your company ready for love…in-store, and online?
If you’re in the Valentine’s retail market or marketing services or products that have anything to do with romance (flowers, chocolates, jewelry, gifts, travel, candles, greeting cards, etc.), you’ve got to be on the web. The amount of Valentine’s Day web searches increases yearly, (by 35% in 2012!) and amounts to $210 billion in web purchases.
If Cupid’s arrow missed your numbers this year, here is what you need to know to get in the game:
WHO IS SEARCHING?
Although search statistics can’t tell us the gender of the searcher, we do know that there are significantly more searches for “Gifts for Him” than “Gifts for Her.”
WHAT ARE THEY SEARCHING FOR?
Google reports that search volume is up across three main product categories: flowers up by18%, gifts up by 27%, and jewelry up by 42%.
WHEN ARE THEY BEGINNING TO SEARCH?
People are using the web to shop earlier than ever for the upcoming Valentine’s Day. Data compiled from Google after last year’s Valentine’s Day shows that searches for Valentine’s products began about two days prior than the year before.
The busiest search times for Valentine’s food and recipes begins one week before the holiday, and peak on the 14th, Valentine’s Day itself.
It’s also crucial to note that while most in-store purchases happen last minute, online orders occur much more in advance.
WHERE ARE THEY SEARCHING?
Valentine’s food and recipes are not just browsed for on Google and Bing. YouTube videos giving Valentine recipe instructions get hundreds of thousands of hits.
The largest amount of location-specific Valentine’s gift and activity searches (besides web browsers) happen on Yelp. In second place comes datehookup.com, and just behind that, mingle2.com. For non-location specific gifts, gifts.com is the overarching winner.
WHY DOES IT MATTER?
Not only is this holiday a $210 billion market, but also online Valentine’s searches influence roughly half of all in-store purchasing decisions.
