The Year of the Cost-Conscious Consumer: Similarweb Estimates 100 Fastest-Growing Digital Brands of 2022
January 25 2023 - 10:00AM
Business Wire
Appeals to consumer frugality drove growth across many
domains
With its annual Digital 100 ranking, Similarweb is recognizing
what it believes to be the 10 top-performing digital domains from
10 critical business categories, ranked by growth – with the top
sites up by hundreds, or even thousands of a percent, between 2021
and 2022.
The winners, announced today, are led by:
- Automotive, #1 site is mobilpromotions.com, an oil
rebates and special offers site, up 248.4%, apparently
benefitting from consumer concern about gas prices and
inflation.
- Beauty & Cosmetics, #1 site is laurageller.com, a
direct-to-consumer makeup brand for women over 40, up 164%.
Laura Geller owes some of its success to strong social media
referrals, particularly from Facebook, which account for a quarter
of its traffic.
- Technology & Services, #1 site is snipfeed.co, a
monetization tool for creators and influencers, up 374.7%.
Snipfeed gets 44.4% of its traffic from social media, making strong
connections with those seeking to boost their brands.
- Consumer Electronics, #1 site is grover.com, a high-end
gadget rental company, up 353.5%. Grover connects with the
theme of consumers looking for ways to get what they want, when
they want it, with a lower cash outlay, using display and search
advertising to build brand awareness.
- Health & Fitness, #1 site is setforset.com, a
provider of fitness equipment, up 347.8%. Set for Set saw a
336% increase in direct traffic and a 351% increase in organic
search.
- Apparel & Accessories, #1 site is intimissimi.com, a
women's intimate clothing brand, up 285.9%. Intimissimi got
a boost from celebrities including official brand ambassador
Jennifer Lopez, plus Sarah Jessica Parker, Heidi Klum, Irina Shayk,
and Gisele Bundchen.
- Financial Services, #1 site is synchrony.com, a private
label credit card and alternative payments provider, up
3,388%. Compared with the rest of the top 10 in this category,
Synchrony brought in the most traffic across the direct, search,
referral, and social channels, and ranked second for display
advertising traffic.
- Jobs & Career, #1 site is meritamerica.org, an
online technical training non-profit for the tech industry, up
229.9%. In a sign of strong brand awareness and repeat
business, 56.8% of Merit America’s traffic comes directly to the
website, 63% of its search traffic comes from searches by company
name.
- News & Media, #1 site is forever-mom.com, a portal
for mothers to find information and parenting advice, up
1,316.3%. Forever Mom’s success may partly be the story of a
pandemic baby boom, but the site also benefitted from a surge in
referrals, which accounted for 65% of its 2022 traffic.
- Travel, #1 site is capitalonetravel.com, Capital One’s
credit card travel rewards program, up 774.2%. Capital One
Travel’s growth may reflect the overall pent-up demand in travel
but also strong traffic from consumers searching for deals.
The Digital 100 identifies what Similarweb estimates to be the
fastest-growing digital companies, not the largest, but
collectively Digital 100 attracted nearly 50 million visits from 20
million people on an average monthly basis. This ranking estimate
is based on traffic from desktop and mobile web internet users
within the United States, focusing on digital domains that were
already active throughout 2021 and averaged at least 100,000
monthly visits in 2022. Parallel reports for the U.K., Germany,
France, and Japan, are also being released today, with one for
Australia to follow.
Winners who ranked across multiple geographies include Set for
Set (#1 Health & Fitness in the U.S., U.K., and Australia),
Snipfeed (#1 Technology & Services in Germany as well as the
U.S.), and Live Universal Awareness Map at liveuamap.org, with its
coverage of the war in Ukraine and other conflicts (#1 News &
Media in France and Germany; #2 in the U.S. and U.K.).
Biggest Trends of 2022
"The events of 2022 put a lot of stress on businesses and
consumers, alike," said Similarweb Chief Product Officer Benjamin
Seror. "With inflation, rising interest rates, and supply chain
issues warping supply and demand, companies had to adapt quickly
and effectively. Many of our Digital 100 winners found ways to
appeal to the cost-conscious consumer, offering options beyond the
mainstream that allowed them to stretch their budgets."
The major trends included:
- The cost-conscious consumer: Budget sensitivity is
showing up everywhere, at a time of heightened inflation. We are
seeing growth in price comparison sites, especially in oil/gas and
auto, as well as growth in sites for do-it-yourself and loyalty
rewards programs.
- Find another way: Consumers want what they want, when
they want it, and are willing to explore sites not in the
mainstream to get it. Thus, we see growth in alternative financing,
sites for people to rent appliances they would normally own,
fast-fashion sites promising low prices, copycats of luxury goods,
and subscription health services.
- Consumers are prioritizing travel above other forms of leisure
even if prices are high. “Revenge Travel” refers to
consumers prioritizing travel above other types of discretionary
purchases – a direct response to the relief of constraints from the
pandemic, combined with consumers' strong desire to escape
confinement. All forms of travel are seeing upticks, especially
cruises and international air.
- AI tools for finding talent were prominent among the
winners in the Jobs & Careers category, while on the job hunter
side of the market, most of the top sites were specific company
career portals.
- Winners have achieved brand recognition and loyalty.
While the winners tended to be proficient in marketing across
digital channels, when looked at collectively, one of their great
successes was the ability to increase direct traffic to their
websites over the course of the year. By December, direct traffic
visits to the Digital 100 domains were up 177%,
year-over-year.
“Similarweb’s mission is to reveal the patterns that drive
digital growth, and it’s fascinating to see the different
strategies these companies have pursued to achieve their success,”
Seror said.
For more details, download our A Day in the Life of the
Cost-Conscious Consumer trends report, or visit the Similarweb
Insights blog for posts on individual categories. A series of
infographics are also available for the media and use on social
media.
Eligibility criteria: The rankings are based on industry
categories Similarweb tracks on an ongoing basis, ranked based on
year-over-year change in their total estimated traffic for 2022
over 2021. To qualify for the U.S. ranking, a domain had to average
at least 100,000 monthly views for 2022 and 50,000 for 2021.
Domains that had no measurable traffic at the beginning of 2021
were also eliminated from the ranking. All product names, logos,
brands, trademarks and registered trademarks are property of their
respective owners.
About Similarweb Similarweb is the most trusted platform
for understanding online behavior, used by millions of people every
day to create insights and strengthen their knowledge of the
digital world. We empower anyone — from the curious individual to
the enterprise business leader — to make smarter decisions by
understanding why things happen across the digital ecosystem. Learn
more here: https://www.similarweb.com/corp/about/
Disclaimer: All data, reports, and other materials
provided or made available by Similarweb are based on data obtained
from third parties, including estimations and extrapolations based
on such data. Similarweb shall not be responsible for the accuracy
of the materials and shall have no liability for any decision by
any third party based in whole or in part on the materials.
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version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230125005191/en/
Media David F. Carr Similarweb press@similarweb.com
Agency: Kivvit Jaxxson Whittle jwhittle@kivvit.com
Josh Rosenfeld jrosenfeld@kivvit.com
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