Evening is peak time for e-commerce

Friday, April 27, 2012 - 12:24 by Mike Price

A new study has found that 8.05pm is the most popular time for British consumers to carry out safe shopping online, according to the Daily Mail.

While this period in the evening has traditionally been the time during which most people are parked in front of the TV to catch up on their favourite shows, it now seems that Brits are also using this period to get on a laptop, tablet or smartphone and make purchases via the web.

The report published by WorldPay, covered 15 countries and over 19,000 respondents, so its results are relatively authoritative.

An average UK consumer will spend six hours a month enjoying safe shopping online, plumbing 25 per cent of their spare cash into e-commerce transactions.

Amazon was, unsurprisingly, found to be the UK's favourite venue for online shopping, with 90 per cent of those questioned saying that they had used its site in the past quarter.

Fifty seven per cent of respondents said that they had used auction site eBay within the same period, putting it in a distant second place to its rival.

Ten per cent of people shop from a tablet device, with 20 per cent sticking to their smartphone when experiencing e-commerce. Fifty per cent sit on their sofa with a laptop at hand, which means that dedicated desktop computers are gradually being squeezed out of the market by more portable devices.

Ninety five per cent of people still buy products online while at home, so shopping while out and about is still relatively uncommon. However, the important distinction made by the report, is that this retail therapy can take place in any room.

Three per cent of respondents even admitted to using e-commerce services while in the bathroom, which may say more about the honesty of a small proportion of the market.