Nielsen Data Report: June 2013

As the summer finally got under way across the country internet users turned away in droves, meaning June’s UK internet universe was at its lowest since June 2010.

In total, 38.7 million people used the internet from home and work over the month, with the figure jumping to 40.1 million when including other locations.

This represents a fall of over 1.2 million users month on month. The overall digital population witnessed a fall in October 2012 before picking up in the build up to Christmas. However, the New Year saw UK users fall steadily from March 2013 onwards.

Top Video Sites

As ever, YouTube remained dominant in its digital domain – the video site pulled in 20.7 million users across the country in June (a 51% reach) but managed to shed a massive 2.1 million compared to the previous month.

A relatively new entry, Vube distinguishes itself from YouTube by giving out cash prizes to the most popular videos and channels created by its users. Jumping into the top ten in May, June saw the fast growing site move past LOVEFiLM to become the third most popular video site of the month.

2.6 million users visited the site over the month, each spending four minutes and eight seconds on average. This resulted in an overall jump in activity if of 24% – the biggest of the lot.

Dailymotion.com, another direct competitor of YouTube, also had a very good month without bothering with a USP. The French site moved up one space in the top ten and up 33 places overall. While not as popular as Vube, the service is more established with users each spending an average of 14 minutes on the site.

ITV Player was the unfortunate recipient of the largest percentage drop in the top ten. Although the broadcaster’s streaming service was down 19% month on month, this only translated to a fall of 323,000 users.

Even though the BBC iPlayer was the most popular out of all the broadcaster’s catch up services, it did fall by over half a million users (-9.8%).

Top Mass Merchandisers

As the summer kicked off properly, June not only saw a decrease in overall traffic but the art of digital purchasing was also dealt a blow. Nine of the top ten mass merchandisers reported a period on period loss over the month, with Tesco hit the hardest.

The hub of the supermarket’s digital presence, which includes the grocery site, Tesco Direct and various other channels, was down by over 1 million users over the month. A total of 7.3 million users over the month meant that 18% of all those online in the UK visited the site at least once, with the average time spent coming to over twenty minutes for each visitor.

While the top five remained in the same order month on month, June saw Play.com crash out (down to 11^th place) allowing The Co-Operative (which doesn’t even offer an online grocery service) to slip in with 1.7 million users, while middle class haven John Lewis slipped down a place and lost 2% of visitors.

The soul digital vendor in the top ten to go through the month unscathed was the site of national grocery giant Sainsburys. A 6.5% increase brought the digital home of J Sainsbury plc up to 3.2 million users.

Even though June wasn’t kind to the top ten shopping entities, their overall popularity remained intact, with all of them falling into the overall top 200 sites.