Online Apparel in the UK – ASOS vs. Next

When ASOS launched in 2000, the letters stood for “As Seen On Screen” with the site helping consumers track down the clothing and accessories they had seen on their favorite celebrities. By 2017, asos.com was delivering globally and generating almost £2B a year in revenue. Today it is the leading online Apparel site in the UK.

The Next brand launched in 1982 quickly becoming one of the UK’s most popular high-street fashion chains. By 1987 the company had launched the Next Directory, a mail-order catalog delivering clothes and accessories to homes all over Britain long before the Internet turned everyone into mail-order monsters. Today, Next still operates over 500 brick-and-mortar shops throughout Britain while next.co.uk is the second most visited Apparel retailer online in the UK.

This post will look at each of these sites’ performance in the UK to reveal the diverging marketing strategies of the UK’s leading online Apparel stores.

ASOS vs. Next – Traffic

Through 2017, traffic to asos.com was mostly ahead of traffic to next.co.uk as they took the top two spots for online Apparel retailing in the UK. Average monthly visits to asos.com were 18.1M, around 15% ahead of next.co.uk with 15.5M. Engagement honors were split between the two sites. Time on site was higher for next.co.uk while the bounce rate was lower at asos.com.

Higher Highs – Making the Most of Holidays and Other Sales

While asos.com averaged higher traffic throughout the year, next.co.uk appears to invest more and get more out of special sales days. The top five traffic days at next.co.uk saw 2.5x the average daily traffic, while at asos.com traffic on its top five days was just 72% higher than the average.

Furthermore, the top five days at next.co.uk are different than those for most other UK retailers as the company creates its own peaks with special sales. The single best day of the year for traffic to next.co.uk was July 15 when they launched their Summer sale. In a single day, there were over 1.5M visits to the site more than 3x the daily average and 40% higher than the peak day of traffic to asos.com which was Black Friday. Boxing Day was another huge success for next.co.uk with daily traffic surpassing asos.com once again.

Traffic Sources

We often use the proportion of direct traffic to a site as an indicator of the site’s popularity and perception among consumers, but this can sometimes be deceiving. While asos.com does receive a higher proportion of direct traffic, combining direct traffic with branded search gives a clearer indication of brand awareness and consumer intent. Branded search traffic is traffic that arrives at the site when the keyword includes the name of the site itself, such as asos uk, asos men or asos marketplace.  In many ways, branded search is more similar to direct traffic than non-branded search.

At first glance, it looks like the sites have vastly different marketing strategies with next.co.uk excelling in organic search at the expense of direct traffic, while asos.com does better on direct traffic referrals, paid search, and social.

At asos.com the combination of direct traffic with the branded search made up 65% of all traffic to the site in 2017. In comparison, while next.co.uk received less direct traffic, combining that traffic with branded search makes a total of 76% branded visits to the site – suggesting higher brand loyalty and consumer intent despite a slightly lower volume of traffic.

Referrals

There are stark differences in the ways the two sites use referral sites to generate traffic. Referrals to asos.com are consistent throughout the year, leveraging the most popular fashion referral sites such as rstyle.me and lyst.com to drive user acquisition for the site. Referral traffic to next.co.uk is focused on recruitment with more than 80% of referral traffic coming from indeed.co.uk.

Conclusion

Each of these powerhouse brands has found a way to excel in a competitive online Apparel market. ASOS is an online-only brand that skews younger with 58% of its site visitors aged under 34. Next is a bricks and clicks stalwart where over 60% of visitors to its site are over 35. Together they prove there is more than one path to digital success in a crowded marketplace.