For some, this means a struggle to get to work and m any will choose to stay at home. Thousands of students will also be at home today after high schools and universities close.

All of this plays a part on the country’s use of the web. This can result in a number of unusual results in our website statistics, particularly for a Monday when most people would be starting their working week.

This video shows some of the snow around Christchurch this morning and explains how people might be using the Internet differently today.

Video Transcript:

Hi, my name’s Mark from NZS.com. As you can see behind me there’s a lot of snow around today and a lot of people are going to be stuck at home.

You might be wondering why an Internet company has an interest in the weather. Really anyone who’s interested in their website statistics should definitely be looking at them today and comparing them with the past because the Internet traffic will change quite a bit with the weather, surprisingly enough.

A lot of people probably stuck at home today. The universities will be closed, a lot more students at home so perhaps search traffic will rise for terms related to students like student jobs, courses, all that kind of stuff.

Obviously the morning will start with heaps of people searching for snow reports, road closures, so that they can find out whether they can get to their place of work.

If they can’t, or even if they can, a lot of staff will be at home so today’s going to be a really good opportunity for business owners and business managers to spend some time online – on their own website, on their search engine presence to see how well they’re doing in search results.

It’s a good chance to look at that and to look at opportunities that might lie in social media to get a bit more presence out there. There’ll be a lot of things that they’ve been wanting to do to their website, to their blog, to their newsletter that they might have been putting off for a long time because there’s too much other stuff going on.

There could be a lot of searches for website design ideas and things like that perhaps. Plenty of that on NZS.com of course. nzs.com/website-resources – you can see that straight from the home page on the menu. Jump in there, have a good look around, there’s a lot of contributors from across New Zealand, all web professionals that have all been contributing some articles and guides on how to get the most out of the Internet and out of website design, search engine optimisation, etc.

Check out the blog, nzs.com/blog, have a crank through that. There’s some good tips in there so subscribe and we’ll see you more in the future with some more tips and ideas.

Cheers, stay warm!

If you are looking at your website statistics today in places like Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Central, take a look at our guide to understanding search queries for some key stats to look out for.

For NZS.com, the largest spike we’ve seen over the last year was in relation to the Olympic Keyword Searches that were being searched on. These searches were across the widest range of user demographics that we’ve seen in some time.

Here’s a helpful list of Easter-related keyword searches which have gained popularity on NZS.com over the last week:

• easter activities
• easter ideas
• easter baking
• easter recipes
• easter crafts
• meaning of easter
• how to make easter eggs
• easter cards
• easter symbols
• easter bun recipe

NZS.com also has a set of useful Easter related Articles: Easter Gifts, Easter Activities and Easter Baking.

If you have a statistics package attached to you website (like Google Analytics, which is freely available) it’s a good idea to look back at Easter 2008 and see if people found your site by searching for Easter related terms. Re-cycling those terms this year within your website copy may help increase your traffic on them.

You might be surprised at the extra opportunities that present themselves by following other seasonal keywords that your visitors are using through-out the year.

High speed connections from Telecom, Vodafone and Slingshot have all been reported as delivering average or below average scores in terms of connection speeds and overall reliability for the March 08 quarter. Smaller internet service providers such as Compas and Snap out-performed the average scores of the bigger providers.

Telstraclear (who offer both DSL and Cable networks) trumped all competition in the three main centres with the highest scores, but were beaten in Hamilton and Dunedin – where they do not have their own network and resell Telecom’s DSL services. Orcon was the highest-scoring provider in these cities.

The report assessed variables such as time to connect, download and upload times, e-mail receivership times and packet loss levels.

A few months back I received an email response to an NZS.com newsletter article about the government’s plans to increase broadband connection speed funding over the next few years. He made a great point – while we are constantly assessing and evaluating internet speeds in the larger cities, the New Zealand media rarely pay any attention to the often abysmal speeds (or even existence of a high-speed service) in smaller towns and rural areas throughout the country. Will the big ISP’s ever pay serious attention to the internet needs of those off the beaten track in New Zealand (anywhere away from Auckland, Wellington or Christchurch?).

If you’re a rural internet user let us know what you think – how is your service?

Image from Flickr.

For the quarter January-March 2008, NZS.com has placed #5 in both the Business and Finance – Business Directories industry, and the Computers and Internet – Search Engines

industry! This status is based on the market share of visits among all New Zealand websites within those industries – so we’re doing pretty well to be in the top five throughout the country in two different categories!

Is your website in the running for a Hitwise

award? All you need to do is register for the awards program (which is free), you don’t need to become a Hitwise Member. It’s a great idea to find out if you rank well amongst your competitors, and strive to upstage them for the next quarter. Stay tuned for NZS.com’s placings in the April-June quarter.

Broadband uptake increased by 14.4% in the six months from March to September 2007, bringing the number of Kiwi broadband users close to 830,000. During the same period, dial up connections dropped by 8.6% to 675,800.

Despite this landmark in our Web-olution, the growth rate for broadband uptake has actually slowed over the last year – from 28.6% for the six months to September 2006, and 18.5% for the period from September 2006 to March 2007.

Take a look at the bigger picture: over the last two years, we’ve seen New Zealand broadband grow from just 9 to a significant 19.6 out of every 100 Kiwi Internet users.

Get connected, check out broadband deals and compare broadband providers in NZ and help us reach the next milestone – 25% of all Kiwis with high speed connections to the Web. And we do still count, even though we’re just a small drop in the ocean of 427 million Internet users worldwide!

The survey, ordered by social networking giant MySpace, found 25% of people aged between 18 and 24 had reduced their television watching and were now more likely to be networking or socialising online. Not only are they turning from the lure of TV, they’re also giving up video games in favour of Internet browsing.

When online, users are visiting social networking sites (in Australia, time spent on MySpace, Facebook, Bebo and other social sites avereages between 21 and 27 minutes per day), as well as sending emails and instant messages to friends.

So, what’s the crux of this? Young people are choosing socialising online over television and other forms of entertainment… and maybe, over socialising in the real world. It seems that the Web is the new television, so if young Kiwis are following the global trend, they’d prefer to be superpoking on Facebook than watching New Zealand TV. The collaborative virtual world of online networking sites is now officially a phenomenon, but where will it go to from here? How reliant will we become on making social connections in cyberspace?

More than 85% of the world’s Internet users surveyed have purchased something online

With an estimated 3.2 million New Zealanders being Internet users, this means that 64% make a purchase online at least once a month – a number that’s high by anyone standards. Research clearly shows that most New Zealanders feel very secure about making a purchase online.

So, what are Internet users buying online? Well, according to Nielsen, the top 5 are:

1. Books (41%)
2. Clothing, accessories and shoes (34%)
3. DVDs, videos and games (24%)
4. Airline tickets (24%)
5. Consumer electronics (23%)

With just over 2 million of New Zealand’s Internet users making a purchase online at least once a month, online shopping is becoming a major player in the retail market.

If you have an e-commerce store, particularly if you’re selling books and clothing then, given current trends, you really need to market your site to take advantage of the boom in online shopping.

NZS.com can help you by providing targeted traffic to your site. For more information, see our online advertising options.

According to Hitwise, gatherers of online search data and statistics, the top 10 New Zealand health searches for December 2007 were:

1. movember
2. les mills
3. bmi
4. treasures
5. weight watchers
6. pubmed
7. southern cross
8. sparc
9. depression
10. auckland hospital

Viewing and analysing search data such as this can be hugely valuable in terms of creating content, targeting Web users and reading the minds of New Zealand searchers. We’ve got a lot of health issues on our minds, covering:

• Health fund raising – Taking part in the men’s health event of the year (the month formerly known as November)
• Health and fitness – Finding gyms, fitness centres and recreational pursuits
• Weight loss – Calculating Body Mass Index and signing up for Weight Watchers
• Health care – Sourcing private health care, hospitals and PubMed (an online medical information resource)
• Mental health – Depression, an all-too-common symptom of modern living?
• Baby nappies – The essential item for newborns and infants!

Not only is this kind of information useful, it’s also changeable throughout the year; in winter, for instance, ‘cold and flu’ searches will be big, as will any hot current events, such as immunization or bird flu. So, keep an eye on search data – it makes for a fascinating insight into the world of search.

• About 80 percent of New Zealanders use the Web
• Internet use falls with age
• Internet use is higher for wealthy people and city dwellers
• One in every eight Kiwis have their own website and one in ten are bloggers
• 83 percent of Internet users surf the Web to research products, while 60 per cent buy things online.

Speaking of shopping online, I read in an article that e-commerce revenue in New Zealand is expected to top $1.5 billion this year. Half of that figure, or roughly $750 million, is spent on travel (with Air New Zealand getting a fair chunk of that), while a whopping $500 million goes to Trademe, excluding vehicles and real estate. According to Sam Morgan, Trademe also accounts for a third of the country’s private vehicle sales and $250 million is spent on retail shopping.

Compared to overseas markets New Zealand, and to some extent Australia, are lagging behind. Sales in the US are expected to exceed $200 billion in 2007, while European sales are tipped to exceed $160 billion and grow by 25 percent per annum for the next five years.

Which brings me to one of two conclusions: either society are getting lazy or we hate shopping malls!

And New Zealand search statistics are showing the popularity of this summer pastime. Reports from Hitwise show that searches relating to the great outdoors have increased significantly in recent weeks. Most of these high ranking search terms are generic (like ‘camping grounds’), but other popular search terms are geographically specific (for instance ‘paihia camping ground’).

Top ten searches relating to camping holidays in New Zealand, for the week ending 8 December, 2007 were:

1. kiwi camping
2. camping grounds
3. camping
4. camping equipment
5. camping gear
6. camping nz
7. camping ground
8. camping sites
9. new zealand camping holidays
10. camping new zealand

So, what can we do with search keyword stats like this? Information on how searchers are finding your website can be used (along with data on what searchers are looking for online) to better tailor your website content and keywords. These statistics also show the power of seasonal search trends (online promotions should take into account the time of year) and region-specific searches (you may not be number one in generic camping term searches, but you could rank highly for a geographically specific search).

And if you’re getting ready to relax over the summer holidays, get sorted for your camping holiday with our directory of New Zealand camping grounds and camping equipment stores.