Visitors continually return to site to offer advice and share tips.
Screwfix's incorporation of social networking and chatrooms are contributory factors in maintaining its popularity on the world wide web, analysis by Hitwise UK has found.

In his blog, Robin Goad, research director at Hitwise UK, explained that Screwfix's online site has outperformed others in The Shopping and Classifieds: House and Garden category over the last 12 months.

Currently it is the second most visited site in the category increasing its share of UK internet visits by 20% since last Easter – for two reasons.

First, it contains forums such as Builders' Talk and Plumbers' Talk; and second, its content forms the basis of a community of loyal users that return to the site.

"These are extremely popular: at the time of writing they contain over 650,000 postings on 70,000 topics," Mr Goad said of the forums.

While of the social network he said: "The number of older social network users is on the rise, and sites such as TalkScrewfix are where they're going."

He also revealed that Screwfix receives traffic from a larger variety of search terms than its main competitors.

Hitwise is a reasearcher of online advertising and marketing.