Sunday, July 8, 2001

UK Leads Europe and U.S. in Visitors to eCommerce Sites

The UK continues to lead Europe and the United States for visitors to e-commerce websites, according to the latest results from Internet monitoring company NetValue. Of the eight countries included in the survey (UK, France, Germany, Spain, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and the US), the UK had the highest percentage of home Internet users visiting an e-commerce website in May.

In the UK, 75.9 per cent of all home Internet users visited an e-tailing website, with 42.1 per cent going on to make a secure connection on a site. In the US, 73.9 per cent of home Internet users visited an e-commerce site, with just 28.8 per cent making a secure connection.

Although Sweden and Denmark have the largest proportion of households online, Swedes and Danes are least likely to shop online. Only 8.1 per cent of Danish visitors and 6.9 per cent of Swedish visitors to an e-commerce website actually entered a secure area of the site, where confidential information is exchanged (for example, entering and transmitting credit card details).

Amazon.de was the number one e-commerce site in Europe last month, visited by more than 2.5 million unique visitors. Lastminute.com was the only travel site to make it into the top ten, visited by more than one million unique visitors in Europe.

Scandinavia continues to lead the rest of Europe and the US for Internet penetration. In May, 57.6 per cent of Swedish households and 55.5 per cent of Danish households were connected to the Internet. Of the eight countries, the US was in third position, with 50.6 per cent of households connected, and the UK was in fifth position, with 38.4 per cent of households connected.

Although Spain has fewest households connected, users spend more time online and view more pages than any other European country. On average, Spanish Internet users connected for 9.4 hours and viewed 924 pages.