The fastest growing websites among Australian audiences in each of the Digital 100 categories are:

• Automotive: Top site cars24.com, up 174.6%. Online car dealership.
• Beauty & Cosmetics: Top site fresha.com, up 106.6%. Reservation and booking platform for beauty treatments.
• Technology & Services: Top site workjam.com, up 76.8%. Productivity platform.
• Consumer Electronics: Top site ecovacs.com, up 95 .7%. Robot vacuum cleaners.
• Health & Fitness: Top site setforset.com, up 301%. Health and fitness guides and supplements.
• Apparel & Accessories: Top site poshmark.com.au, up 144%. Social marketplace for pre-loved clothing.
• Financial Services: Top site cfs.com.au, up 91%. Superannuation and investments.
• News & Media: Top site nytimes.com, up 332%. International news site.
• Travel: Top site flyscoot.com, up 884.8%. Budget airline.
• Hobbies & Leisure: Top site livenation.com.au, up 341%. Ticket retailer and event guide.

This ranking is based on traffic from Australian desktop and mobile web internet users, focusing on digital domains that were active throughout 2021 and averaged at least 100,000 monthly visits in 2022. Parallel reports for the USA, UK, Germany, France, and Japan, are also being released, and separate reports for additional countries will follow.

Common theme: Back to life

A common theme across many of these categories was life returning to a sense of normalcy after two years of pandemic lockdowns. For example, in the hobbies and leisure category, not only was the ticket retailer and event guide Live Nation the fastest growing digital property, six of the 10 fastest growing websites were all ticket retailers. These included theticketmerchant.com.au (+302%), frontiertouring.com.au (+282.8%), and ticketek.com.au (+151.6%).

This trend also played out in the travel sector as the four fastest growing websites were all airlines offering flights between Australia and South-East Asia. Along with the category leader flyscoot.com, airasia.com (+703.6), malaysiaairlines.com (+486.2%), and singaporeair.com (+362.5%) witnessed significant traffic increases throughout 2022.

"After all those years in lockdown, it's clear there is a pent up demand among Australians to live their lives again. Ticket and gig guide websites dominated the leisure category last year and airlines offering affordable flights to South East Asia topped the travel category as Australians rushed to head overseas," said Similarweb ANZ head of account management Holly Joshi.

Cost of living pressures still taking their toll

Despite the desire to get back to normal, this year's results show Australians are changing their behaviour in response to economic pressures beyond their control.

This is particularly apparent in the financial services sector. Last year's Digital 100 was dominated by home loan providers but, with rapidly rising interest rates, this year tells a very different story. With retirees, or those close to retirement, concerned with how long their superannuation and other investments will support them, traffic to Colonial First State almost doubled in 2022.

"The impact of the economic squeeze is clearly having an impact on Australian consumer behaviour, and one category in which we can see this clearly is in the automotive industry," Joshi said. "Although cars24 had the fastest growth in the category, petrolspy.com.au had by far the largest traffic of the top 10 sites. Over 2022, more than 39 million Australians logged in to find cheap petrol while the rest of the top 10 averaged around 2.5 million visitors for the year each."

"So, while there's a real desire among consumers to live life to fullest again, it isn't all festivals, international holidays, and sunshine – Australians are facing very real economic pressures."