This is part 2 of our Lockdown Diary series, with part 1 focusing on France. Today we look at the web navigation data in the UK: based on the data collection1 on the 24th & 25th March, we looked for new patterns in online behavior. And we found some! The background: Here at respondi, we also passively track our opted-in panel members’ web behavior – across all devices. Methodologies such as this, are more crucial than ever before in these challenging times, that are forcing us to use the web in ways we hadn’t to this extent before.
In the UK, lockdown became official on the 23rd of March.
Firstly, the message seems to have been widely received. One of the main changes we see is related to the audience of news websites: as expected a lot of these news outlets have been visited far more than usual. This is also the same for institutional websites like gov.co.uk (+ 95.7 % in number of visits).
The domestic organizational changes are also becoming clearly apparent in our analysis too. Working on remote stimulates far more usages of video conference tools: for instance, we noticed +606% visits on zoom.us (data based on desktop usages). Plus, we got some help with keeping kids busy as long as possible: as luck would have it, Disney Plus was just launched in the UK and we observed +987% increase in number of visits; and somewhat less entertaining, +15% on Wikipedia and yourdictionary. Food is also a major issue. Ordering food at home is undoubtedly increasing: +180% for ubereats and +78.5% for Deliveroo (desktop usages). But, to prevent more restrictive regulations to come, all online food retailers are under pressure for sure, with a special focus on frozen food as we see with Iceland.
And to finish on a positive message, the lockdown could be the occasion to do things that we usually do not have much spare time to do, like cooking (+86% on greatbritishchefs), DIY (+161% on diy), or taking the time to listen audiobooks (+466% on audible – desktop data).
Something we can all be proud of, is the community spirit growing. We see these times engendering new ways of supporting each other within local communities (+ 120,5% nextdoor, local social network) !
respondi UK
1 Measures based on 925645 websites visits on desktop, from a n=1780 national representative (gender, age – 18-65) UK sample, timeframe: 1st of March to 25th of March.
