Sport Relief becomes most visited humanitarian website in the UK
Howard Lake | 28 July 2006 | News
Online competitive intelligence service Hitwise UK confirms that Sport Relief’s website became the most visited in its humanitarian category as people visited to donate to the thousands of runners who took part in their one mile sponsored run on 15 July 2006.
Sport Relief hit the top spot in the week ending 8th July 2006, rising from 4th position the previous week.
The site reached number 282 among all websites in the UK on 15 July 2006, up from #1,028 a week earlier.
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On the day of the mile runs the site accounted for 33% of visits to humanitarian sites in the UK, up from 12% of visits on the previous Saturday.
Heather Hopkins, Director of Research for Hitwise UK, said: “Hitwise analysis has shown that visits to charity websites are driven by specific events and promotions. Sport Relief offers a perfect example of a charitable event that mobilised the attention of UK consumers.”
Searches for comedian David Walliams helped drive visits to the Sport Relief. His sponsored cross-channel swim resulted in his name featuring in four of the top 20 search terms that generated visits to the Sport Relief website in the four weeks to 15 July 2006.
Sainsbury’s, the sponsor behind the Sport Relief mile, succeeded in driving considerable traffic to Sport Relief’s site. It ranked 10th among sites generating visits to the charity site.
Hitwise also generated data on the type of people visiting the Sport Relief site. The lifestyle profiles of visitors showed that many came from the ‘Symbols of Success’, ‘Happy Families’ and ‘Ties of Community Mosaic Groups developed by Experian.
According to Hitwise, “all three demographic groups are likely to make charitable contributions to children’s charities, a major drive of the Sport Relief fundraising initiative. In addition, the ‘Ties of Community’ and ‘Symbols of Success’ demographic groups are likely to make charitable donations to third world charities or homeless charities, causes that are both represented by Sport Relief.”
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.