Nielsen Data Report: May 2014

May 2014 saw a total of 38.8 million users access the internet from the UK, the lowest figure reported yet. According to data released by online measurement company Nielsen, a slight month on month fall of -1.2% was enough to push the digital population below the previous lowest point, February 2014’s 38.9 million users.

The UK’s online population reached a tipping point in October 2012 – a total of 43.9 million people logged on throughout the month – only to see a steady decrease over the following months.

When looking at social grades the online audience in May 2014 mainly consisted of the middle classes (Grade B), accounting for 29%. Next up were the lower middle classes, the C1s, who made up 18% of all those online.

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

Top Ten

The ten most popular sites in May contained the usual suspects, with the internet’s most famous brands all making an appearance. As usual, the Google homepage led the pack with 27 million users, despite witnessing a month on month fall of -6%, which translates to a loss of 1.7 million users.

Reflecting the overall decline of the UK’s digital population, nine of the top ten sites saw a drop in activity compared to the previous month. Auction site eBay – the only website not affected – boasted a minute rise in users in May with an increase of 6,000 people.

Facebook received the second biggest loss after Google with a loss of 1.4 million users (-7%), although the time spent on the social network jumped up by 13 minutes to a mammoth average of 8 hours per person.

The branding nightmare that is the MSN/WindowsLive/Bing homepage had a total of 18.5 million users after losing just under half a million visitors over the month. While there wasn’t much of a difference month on month, there was a significant -32% drop compared to the amount of users in May 2012.

Top Commerce

Two of the top ten commerce sites actually made it in to the overall top ten sites, proving how popular the digital shopping experience is in the online world.

Controversial retailer Amazon remained the UK’s first stop for online bargains, with the popular purveyor of everything securing nearly 16 million users in May. While this represented a loss of 1.1 million people, the drop in popularity wasn’t enough to knock it from the top spot.

Also represented in the overall top ten was eBay which came second place in its category but tenth place overall.

Apart from Amazon, it was only classified site Gumtree that saw a fall in users, down -10%, which resulted in a drop in overall rank from 60^th to 68^th.

Top News

May’s results weren’t quite as disastrous for the most popular news sites, with the BBC homepage coming out on top with 16 million users, which translates to 42% of the UK’s digital stratosphere. On average, each visitor returned to the site twelve times and clicked through 77 pages over those sessions.

AOL-owned news aggregator HuffingtonPost displayed the biggest percentage drop in May, down by -9%, although this only translated to a loss of 283,000 users. A total of 29 million users helped the left-wing website stay in eighth place, reaching 7.4% of all those online in the UK. Although the BBC homepage took the biggest brunt of losses, HuffingtonPost represented the second biggest loss in the top ten.

MailOnline, the UK’s most popular national newspaper site, came in at second place, while suffering a drop of 255,000 users (-4%). Despite the high visibility of celebrity gossip and fashion stories, the majority of people who visited MailOnline in May were male, who made up 56%.

It was the Telegraph website which boasted the biggest jump in popularity in the top ten, although a rise of 66,000 users (1%) didn’t add much to its total of 4.8 million (a 12% share). Visitors to the site spent an average of 23 minutes per person over the month, far behind its closest rival the Guardian, which managed to hold users’ attention for one hour and forty minutes on average.

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