Product Page Views
Is the cost of living crisis having an impact on consumer shopping habits?
We have been in a cost of living crisis for some time now with increased costs on food, fuel, and energy whilst seeing interest skyrocket making some peoples mortgages significantly more expensive every month. We believe that this may have a knock on effect on the way that people shop online. Currently the majority of consumers have less disposable income than what they may have had before therefore this could influence the shopper to shop around more and seek out the best price for their goods.
One indication of this, using Similarweb, is looking at page views on a website. Our hypothesis is that if a site is seeing an increase in page views, it could be because consumers are looking at more pages for the best price. There are some holes in the theory in terms of promotions (e.g. clearly there is a spike in Prime Day) and the way in which a brand may optimise its website to make the experience seamless. Interestingly when we look at Amazon.co.uk on Similarweb from Jan 2021 to August 2023 (24th August), we can see broadly that there are more page views happening than the past two years which could give some indication of consumers wanting to shop around more.
The data or theory isn’t fully conclusive but this trend is one that we will continue to monitor based on how the economic standings of the UK change over time.
