This has been an interesting spring, to say the least, for brands. As the nation has worked hard to handle the COVID-19 pandemic, consumers, owing largely to their states’ stay-at-home orders, have rekindled their love for forgotten joys, intensified their appreciation for long-treasured products and discovered new ways to remain busy while contributing to the economy. Morning Brew, using web traffic data from SimilarWeb, addressed what that diversity meant for e-commerce sites over the month of May, assembling a list of the top 25 by percentage traffic increase. Two of those sites happened to be branded merchandise stores for a pair of well-known brands.
.@SimilarWeb shared exclusive data with Retail Brew. https://t.co/gI2d5tfGsZ via @Retail_Brew
— Sheraz Bhatti (@sherazbhatti) June 1, 2020
The first was Guns N’ Roses, who last year showed us their enthusiasm for celebrating moms and engaging in litigation over brand integrity. The band saw site traffic to its merch site jump 765 percent, placing them No. 2 overall out of all sites included in SimilarWeb’s data. We are going to guess that attention for the rockers took off because of a since-ended “Stay-Home, Stay-Safe” competition through which a winning fan’s artwork would appear on the band’s official store page. It could also be due to alterations to the band’s 2020 tour schedule that would have been picking up steam in Europe right now and would have been heading to the U.S. next month, including a July 8 stop in Promo Marketing’s Philadelphia.
The second merch store was for UFC, at No. 11 overall with a 277 percent traffic increase. The store abounds in branded apparel and accessories, including promotional products industry constants like pins, keychains and bobbleheads. The increase probably stems from the sport’s return to action, with this Saturday’s UFC 250 event in Las Vegas a likely motivator.
As Morning Brew explains, most of the brands that have seen a spike in traffic for their online stores are more obscure. For example, the list features multiple roller-skate brands, for some reason. But we can still gather some insights into product trends by looking at the rest of the list.
Evermine, a personalization site that had a 181 percent traffic bump last month, placed No. 19. A visit to its site reveals an abundance of cards, coasters, invitations, labels, stickers and tags—so, in other words, people are seeing these promo staples as particularly useful quarantine items. Not to be forgotten, apparel, particularly performance and yoga attire, had several entries on the list, signifying that end-users are actively seeking out these kinds of items right now.
