More of the UK Net Shopping Than Ever Before

Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - 12:26 by Simon Crisp

Good news for online retailers-the British population is slowly but surely moving wholesale into the e-commerce arena, with more people than ever before turning to the net for safe shopping online. In February of this year, the UK reached an important milestone in the history of online shopping-for the first time, over half of the UK population aged 15 and over claimed to engage in safe shopping online, according to a report prepared by the British Population Survey (BPS) and published by net community the IMRG. 

The report claims that in February, 50.6% of the adult population were shopping on the internet and that this actually increased in March, with the number of online shoppers growing to 51%. 

The figures are published in a special report from the IMRG which provides in depth analysis of the consumer base for e-commerce. In creating the report, the BPS looked at the first quarter of this year, carrying out face-to-face interviews at the homes of consumers to provide detailed information at a national level. 

The BPS studied the profiles of internet shoppers to find out who they are and how they actually go about their online shopping. And together, the IMRG and the BPS are building the e-Shopper Index, which will provide further detailed facts and figures relating to the subject. The Index has already tracked behaviour over the course of the last two years, during which period 3.7 million people in this country have started shopping online. 

The rate of growth is really quite staggering. It was only some ten years ago that the first broadband connections became available for the domestic market. The IMRG has revealed that since that time, the value of UK online shopping has grown by around 6,000 per cent.