Nielsen Data Report: January 2013

After the frenzy of activity that comes with every festive period, January saw the UK’s online population settle back into a normal routine, with the overall number of users falling slightly.

A -1.4% fall month on month meant that a total of 41 million UK users accessed the internet from work or home over the month. When mobile activity is included January’s total rises to 42 million users.

The middle classes ruled the digital domain with the Grade Bs making up the largest social group, with 29% of the UK’s online audience. The lower middle classes, C1s, followed with 19%.

The capital held the vast majority of internet users, with London boasting that 19% of the country’s digital population fell within its boundaries. The Midlands came in second, with 13%.

Further breakdowns can be found using the Universe Profile report here.

Apparel and Beauty

The conclusion of the frantic shopping season was highlighted in the clothes retail sector, with all of the top ten sites shedding visitors month on month. Clothing at Tesco was hardest hit, down 845,000 users month on month. This translates to a monthly drop of 48%.

ASOS.com remained the number one provider of online clothing but was subject to a 27% fall. In spite of this, those that did revisit the site in January viewed more pages each (up from 25 to 32) and time per person was also increased by a minute and a half.

Despite losing 19% of December’s users and dropping a massive 131 places, the overall market decrease allowed Boohoo.com to clamber into the top ten.

Clarks also pulled off a similar trick, jumping up to become the sixth most popular apparel and beauty site. On average, each visitor to the online store spent six minutes and fifty one seconds selecting those all-important New Year school shoes.

Current Events

The BBC remained the top provider of global news for the digital population with three entries in the top ten. The main BBC portal came first with 21.8 million visitors over the month, followed by BBC News with 11.4 million people flocking to the channel.

The BBC Homepage was the only one of the three not to see a fall. The victory was a minor one though, with the site only growing by 0.7%.

The Sun, home of quality celebrity tattle, moved up one place in the top ten and grew its audience by 13%. The Independent jumped into the top ten after seeing the HuffingtonPost fall out and boasted 25% growth for the first month of 2013.

MailOnline, The Sun‘s upper class spiritual relation, remained the number one online national newspaper with 8.1 million users. Liberal rival the Guardian followed closely behind, both in the top ten current event sites and overall, with 7.7 million users and an 18% share. Yahoo! News Websites wasn’t so lucky, witnessing the biggest fall out of the top ten by losing 293,000 users.

Broadcast Media

Things weren’t looking so grim for the top ten broadcast media sites. Sky Portal remained at the top of the pile, pulling in 9.3 million users over the month. The main gateway for all BSkyB sites saw a slight increase in activity for the month, up 3.4%.

ITV.com also celebrated a minor victory, with a 2.5% increase in users, totalling at 5.2 million users. While the main online hub for the broadcaster didn’t wrangle in a huge amount of new users, it did see a dramatic increase in time spent per person. Each visitor to the site, on average, spent 16 minutes clicking through the content, up from 9 minutes in December.

Channel 5 had much more to write home about, thanking their blessings for their procurement of the Big Brother franchise. The broadcaster’s site saw its audience jump by a massive 66.7% in January, totalling at 1.5 million users. The site also jumped up 201 over all places, helping it move into the ninth most popular broadcast media destination.

Video Sites

January was a mixed bag for catch up and on demand sites with half of them taking a hit. YouTube, planet earth’s most successfully video sharing site, lost 5.2% of traffic in January. While this mightn’t seem like a huge chunk, it actually translates to 1.3 million users. Machinima continued to be a strong presence on YouTube, moving up a place despite losing 6% of visitors period on period.

Channel 4’s catch up service, 4oD, fell down one place in the top ten (16 places overall) and decreased the amount of time people spent on the site but managed to hang onto its 5% reach.

BBC iPlayer remained the second most popular online video service with 6.8 million viewers but definitely felt the brunt of the post-Christmas fall in interest. Along with losing 228,000 users, the on-demand service saw time spent and pages per person drop, still  had a 16% share.

The New Year wasn’t very kind to Sky Go which dropped out of the top ten, only to be replaced by aggregator of ‘free’ content  Movie2k.to.

Film subscription competitors Netflix and LOVEFiLM.com both enjoyed a small injection of activity, but nothing too drastic. Netflix did see a significant drop in the amount of time user spent on the site, down from 44 minutes in December to 24 minutes in January.

Amazon-owned LOVEFiLM didn’t see such a dramatic fluctuation, increasing time spent per person by one minute, up to 21 minutes month on month.

Further breakdowns and reports can found in the Online database.