French look to domestic websites

Warc, 29 August 2014

PARIS: French consumers tend to favour domestic websites, with international names challenging for a top spot only in categories such as travel and tourism and, to a lesser extent, clothing.

Harris Interactive analysed responses from a representative sample of more than 40,000 people aged over 15 to compile lists of the top ten websites in nine categories, from clothing to high-tech.

While travel-sncf.com remained the preferred site of French internet users for travel and tourism, being chosen by 8.5%, Harris noted that its leading position was being challenged by Dutch portal booking.com, which had gained 1.3 points to a 7.7% share since the previous iteration of this research in spring 2013, and by US site tripadvisor.fr (+1.6 points to 6.3%).

In the film category, allocine.fr was the runaway leader, gaining 64.7% of regular visitors to movie sites. A long way behind in second spot was ugc.fr with 3.4%, while third place was shared between cinemasgaumontpathe.com and imdb.com, both on 2.7%.

Clear leaders also emerged in most other categories considered, with a significant gap evident in health and fitness, where the leader, cooking site marmiton.org, had a 50.4% share, well ahead of the next two, 750g.com on 7.1%, and cuisineaz.com on 6.6%.

In the outings and leisure category, allocine.fr kept the top spot with a 30.3% share, although this was 6 points down on 2012, followed by ticketing site fnacspectacles.com on 6.0% and restaurant guide lafourchette.com on 4.9%.

In TV, the site of listings magazine Tele-Loisirs had increased its share by eight points since spring 2012 to 27%. Then came canalplus.fr (6.7%) and télé 7 jours (5.5%).

High-tech showed a similar pattern, with 01net.com taking a 27.2% share, before commentcamarche.net on 8.6% and lesnumeriques.com moving into third place on 7.2%.

Vente-privee.com lead the way in clothing and footwear on 10.5%, but was being challenged by UK-based site asos.fr, whose share had leapt almost four points to 7.5% displacing laredoute.fr, now in third place on 7.2%.

The female category was led by aufeminin.com on 24.3%, followed by doctissimo.fr on 11.5% and femmeactuelle.fr on 9.3%. This category had some crossover with 'people' where voici.fr was the leading site (13.1%), just ahead of public.fr (12.0%) and purepeople.com (8.7%).

Data sourced from Harris Interactive; additional content by Warc staff