UKOM Data Report: December 2011

December saw the UK’s online population pass the 40 million mark for the first time since May 2011. The last-minute seasonal panic brought UK shoppers online in search of the perfect present, although many retail sites saw varied results for the month. The top sites by category report can be found here.

A total of 40.5 million users meant that the digital UK population was up by 2% YoY. Despite this increase, many of the top brands and sites lost users over the festive period.

Brands

Despite the increase in total UK audience only half of the top ten brands in December saw traffic rise, with YouTube grabbing the highest MoM increase of just under 3%.  Amazon continued to attract more users in December, following on from the sharp rise it has witnessed throughout the last six months of 2011.

The BBC brand’s online audience dropped below the 20 million mark to 19.8 users, a decrease of 5%. The average time spent on the site, per person, fell slightly to 48 minutes and 22 seconds.

Desite the season it would seem that people still have time to watch viral clips and catch-up TV as YouTube continued to grow in December. 588,000 extra users throughout the month was enough to push BBC out of the way, making the video sharing community the fifth most popular online brand with the UK audience. A total of 21 million users meant that 52% of the online population visited YouTube during this period.

Like Amazon and YouTube, Wikipedia also saw a steady increase in traffic in the second half of 2011 but December saw a loss for the online encyclopedia, down 1.5 million users. The collaborative project saw the biggest actual loss of the top ten brands, a massive MoM decrease of 10%.

Retail – Year on Year

There was an increase in the number of online retailers making it into the top one hundred sites in December compared to the same time in 2010. Online giant Amazon was the first destination for the majority of Christmas shoppers, growing an impressive two million users (10%) YoY. iTunes witnessed the second biggest change over the 12 months, increasing traffic by 1.2 million users (13%), helping Apple’s music store become the fourth most popular retail site in December.

Further evidence that the UK was being more frugal this Christmas was seen in the loss of traffic for the high-end stores. John Lewis suffered at a loss of 1.3 million users YoY, a 19% drop.  This is surprising considering the retailer had an ‘outstanding’ Christmas. Marks & Spencer wasn’t affected as badly but did see a small loss of 264,000 users (4.2%). Tesco, Tesco Direct and Sainsburys continued this trend – they all were down around 500,000 users each. Play.com, the original online home of the bargain CD, lost 1.5 million users over the year resulting in the biggest percentage drop of the top 100 (-22%).

However, it was not all gloomy news on the retail front with ASDA and ASDA Direct attracting more traffic YoY. Grocery site ASDA moved up 12 overall places since December 2010, growing by over 10%. ASDA Direct had similar fortunes, growing by over 20% YoY, totalling 3.8 million users.

Online Newspapers

All but two of the top ten online newspapers experienced a dip in popularity in December, with Guardian.co.uk taking the biggest hit. The liberal news site was down 900,000 users but remained the second most popular UK paper. MailOnline once again came out on top but also lost its fair share of users also; down 629,000 MoM, the second biggest loss of the top ten.

London Evening Standard saw the biggest percentage loss (-34%) and slipped down one spot. The Independent, however, had different fortunes. The website for The Independent paper gained an extra 57,000 users for December.

Social Media

Even though Facebook continued a clear dominance of the social media landscape in December, there was still time for some growth. The premier social network grew by 1% MoM, giving it a total of 26.3 million users.  While the online population found time for social media, professional networking took a hard hit in the weeks leading up to Christmas. LinkedIn lost 663,000 users, a massive month on month drop of 17%, the largest loss of the top ten social sites. Twitter saw a slight drop in activity in December, down 5% from the previous month.

BBC Communities and Myspace.com both lost over 10% of users over December, while Google’s social project seemed to picked up some steam. Bouncing back after a dip in popularity in November, Google+ gained a further 300,000 users. This is an impressive 15% jump MoM. The newest social network has actually grown quite a bit since launch, expanding its user base by 470% since August 2011.