A strong UK housing market encouraged consumers to shop around online for home and garden products in the third quarter, driving a sharp rise in online searches.
Retail search volumes for home and garden grew by 15% in the third quarter compared with the same period a year earlier, according to a report by the British Retail Consortium (BRC) and Google. It was a faster pace of annual growth than both the first and second quarters of 2014, when home and garden searches rose by 9% and 13% respectively.
The top three most commonly searched for items were beds, Nutribullets (a new type of smart blender/juicer) and Dysons between July and September.
Helen Dickinson, director general of the BRC, said consumers were heavily influenced by online research when choosing a mortgage, with searches correlating strongly with data on mortgage approvals.
She said: “Given this trend, it’s not surprising that we’re seeing people take to the internet to decorate and furnish their homes as well as finding the funds to purchase them. Search volumes in the home and garden category have risen 15% compared with the same period last year. This is likely due to an increasingly healthy housing market as sales in these categories tend to be directly impacted by house sales.”
There was a big jump in the number of home and garden searches conducted on smartphones, 41% higher in the third quarter than a year earlier.
Searches on tablets grew by 22% over the same period.
