Online shopping sees solid Christmas start
The start of the Christmas online shopping season has seen a solid start this year, with UK visits to retail sites up 18% during the first week of November compared to a typical week during the prior two months, according to new research.
The comScore study found that visits increased even further throughout the month, hitting a 41% growth rate during the week ending 29 November.
Gian Fulgoni, comScore chairman, said: “Right now the UK and France appear to be demonstrating the highest rate of traffic growth to retail sites, outperforming the US by a considerable margin.”
Across November, average weekly visits to online retail sites grew 35% in the UK compared to the typical shopping week from the prior two months.
Of the top 5 online retailers as ranked by average weekly visits across the month of November, Play.com Sites experienced the largest growth with a 62% gain, closely followed by the Home retail group, owner of Argos and Homebase (up 61%) and Tesco Stores (up 50%).
A report from eMarketer published in September predicted that over half the UK population will shop online by 2013.
It said that the number of online shoppers in the UK will hit 31.8 million by 2013, with 72.5% of all web users expected to shop online this year.