Nielsen Data Report: December 2013

A total of 40.8 million people were online in the UK over the month of December, according to data released by online measurement company Nielsen. This represents a small increase of 600,000 unique users from November as people flocked to the internet in the run-up to Christmas – as the jump in traffic for the top online retailers testifies.

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

Mass merchandisers sites

In complete contrast to the on-demand sites, all of the nation’s favourite digital shopping destinations boasted a monthly increase as users turned their backs on the traditional Christmas shopping experience.

As usual the biggest online brands had the most to gain, with dominant digital shopping giant Amazon boosting its traffic by 1.8 million users (a 10% increase) over December. While the average time spent per person remained the same, the total number of users to the site swelled to 20.7 million in the weeks before Christmas.

The second biggest increase belonged to the second most popular catalogue merchant, Argos, which went up from 7.7 million users in November to just over 9 million (a 17% increase) users in December.

As a result, the website for supermarket chain Tesco was pushed down one place in the top ten after only managing a 3% increase. A 21% reach meant that the mass retailer still managed a total of 8.5 million unique users throughout December.

Elsewhere in the top ten, Marks & Spencer pushed past upmarket rival, John Lewis, to claim the title of fifth most visited merchandiser website, with a total of just under 5 million users and a 12% reach, while John Lewis still managed an impressive 12% month on month (MoM) rise, resulting in 4.8 million users.

Dixons’ retail-owned Currys displayed the biggest boost in traffic out of the top ten with a 25% increase. The online electronics store moved past Sainsbury’s with 3.5 million users visiting the site.

Video on-demand sites

December wasn’t looking great for top video on-demand websites with only three of the top ten seeing a rise in visitors – only one of those boasted an impressive MoM rise. Blinkx, an up and coming UK-based video aggregator and search engine, jumped into the top ten with 899,000 viewers in December.

While that mightn’t sound significant, it does represent a notable 84% rise since November and an even more impressive six month user jump of 1943%. This slow and steady rise in popularity has seen Blinkx crawl up to 386^th most popular overall site in the UK and the 10^th most visited on-demand site.

Machinima on YouTube, while much more popular, didn’t quite manage to achieve the same growth. The entertainment channel for gamers pulled in over 2.1 million users throughout the month, resulting in a 4% MoM rise, helping the site hold on to the third position.

Despite the small increase in popularity – or perhaps because of it – the average time spent dropped by five minutes, bringing the average down to 43 minutes per person.

Of course, YouTube remained in the top spot, something even a 738,000 MoM drop in users couldn’t change. With over 19 million users in the UK visiting the site in December, the Google-owned service was far ahead of its nearest rival.

Speaking of which, BBC iPlayer remained the second most popular on-demand site with 5 million users, representing a MoM fall of -9%.

While Netflix jumped up three places with 1.6 million users visiting the site, average time per person fell by 19 minutes to just under a still impressive two hours. ITV Player wasn’t so fortunate, witnessing the biggest MoM percentage loss (-28%) and slipping down two places. Netflix‘s biggest rival, LOVEFiLM.com remained stagnant in ninth position despite a -9% loss.

Photography sites

While the most popular photography tools have a heavy presence in the world of apps, the ten most popular sites had mixed fortunes over December with six seeing a fall in traffic. Despite featuring many familiar brands, the top sites witnessed minimal traffic.

The Instagram site was down -8% after shedding 202,000 users compared with November, but was still the first port of call for many digital photography enthusiasts and increased the time spent rose from 13 minutes to 17 minutes per person.

Photo sharing site Flickr remained in second place despite the Yahoo! site seeing a -14% loss.

Picasa, the Google-owned photo organising site, witnessed a minute loss in users and held on to the third place position with a total of 1.7 million users. Although less popular than its higher ranking rivals, every user that did visit spent 29 minutes on the site over the month.

Photography retailer relic Kodak continued its epic decline, despite making the top ten, with just 267,000 visitors coming to the site in December.

Further breakdowns and reports can found in MediaTel’s Online database.