For English Canadian Web surfers, there’s no place like home. Particularly when it comes to shopping, banking and staying on top of the news.
That’s the conclusion of the latest report from digital media measurement firm Media Metrix Canada.
For the first time, the report has broken down its audience ratings by category, providing figures on Canadian Web usage in 27 vertical-interest categories, including retail, business/finance, news/information, and careers.
The report found that while Amazon.com might be the most popular retail site among Canadian Web surfers, homegrown sites ColumbiaHouseCanada.com, Chapters.ca and Sears.ca placed a respectable second, third and fifth in their class.
Similarly, RoyalBank.com, CanadaTrust.com, TDBank.ca, CIBC.com and Scotiabank.ca took the top five spots in the business/finance category, reaching a total of 36.4% of all unique visitors.
Brent Bernie, president of Media Metrix Canada, says the new category breakdowns were added to allow sites to see where they stand against their direct competitors.
The report also evaluated for the first time the "stickiness" of various kinds of sites, ranking them by the average number of minutes visitors spent there. Auction sites led the pack at 19.9 minutes per person per day.
Bernie says additional features will be introduced in subsequent reports, including a French-language sample to be released in June and a workplace sample to be released in July.
Media Metrix, which opened shop last fall, has been criticized by a number of major Canadian Web site operators, including Canoe.ca, for not taking into account French-language and workplace usage.
The Media Metrix report, based on data collected in March, derived its information from a panel of just under 5,000 home Internet users.
