Reimagining the high street: if clicks became bricks

Asos would command the ‘virtual high street’ in fashion retail with a 32.5% share, but Amazon would dominate general shopping.

New data from online savings solution, Raisin UK has reimagined the high street, seeing how it would look if online retailers competed with physical stores.

The company used mobile and desktop search visibility versus revenue to reveal what a virtual high street would look like across fashion, general retail and supermarkets, reported The Industry.Fashion.

Asos would command a healthy 32.5% in the fashion retail space, but high street staple Debenhams would still retain a respectable position, taking up 24%.

Boohoo (9.6%), Pretty Little Thing (7.1%) and Missguided (6.7%) would all perform well, although New Look would claim a 7.4% share.

H&M would take a 5.5% share with Zara on 3.5%. However, it wasn’t such good news for high street brands Topshop with 1.9% and Primark with just 1%.

Indeed, collectively the online fashion stores would cover over 55% of their market despite their varying levels of revenue, meaning that if the high street relied as heavily on search visibility as the internet, bricks and mortar shops would have to step up their game in order to stand up to the competition.

In the general retail space, perhaps unsurprisingly, Amazon would dominate with a staggering 60.4% presence on the virtual high street.

Its closest competitor would be eBay on 23.4%, although Argos would retain a strong position with 9.1%, with John Lewis claiming 3%.

Boots would account for 1.3%, while Halfords would come in at 1.1%.

However, when it comes to supermarkets, the online-only Ocado would come in with 4.5% of search visibility on the hypothetical shopping street, due to a lower revenue compared to the physical shops.

Asda was top dog here – with 32.8% (a figure which shows the Asda brand stands up against Tesco’s revenue in terms of online search) – followed by Tesco (29.7%), Sainsburys (17.4%) and Waitrose (6.1%).