Search data reveals hottest Christmas products

Tuesday, November 29, 2016 - 10:07 by Sarah Collinson

The latest stats from Hitwise have highlighted many of the winners and some of the losers in the annual race to become the most sought-after items sold via safe shopping online during the festive shopping season.

Hatchimals were sitting pretty at the top of the chart, with more people searching for this product than any other individual item. Demand is so strong that the toy’s manufacturers have had to admit that their output may not be significant enough to meet it, meaning many consumers who want to buy one will be disappointed.

Second place went to Fitbit, the fitness band brand which has managed to ride a wave of popularity that seems not to have been dampened by the fact that the smartwatch market as a whole has not enjoyed the ongoing sales growth that some had predicted.

The top five most searched-for products in the week leading up to Black Friday was rounded out by the PlayStation 4 Pro, Sony’s more powerful iteration of its latest home console, and Lego.

A new entry for Yankee Candle in tenth position marks the fact that scented candles have skyrocketed as a must have Christmas stocking filler to buy online over the past 12 months.

Sony’s dominance in the current-gen console war was exemplified by the fact that Microsoft’s Xbox One was only able to attain eighth place. So while plenty of people were searching for it, this machine did not manage to come that close to matching its main rival.

The iPhone 7 was also conspicuously low in the list, coming in ninth and reflecting the fact that the saturation of the smartphone market in the UK has reached a point at which even Apple is struggling to maintain momentum among consumers.