Shoppers in Hull top e-commerce usage charts

Monday, December 12, 2011 - 11:25 by Sarah Collinson

A study has concluded that Hull could be the busiest place in the UK for people carrying out safe shopping online this Christmas season.

Experian Hitwise has discovered that the proportion of consumers in Hull using e-commerce sites to get their festive orders in could be comparatively higher than anywhere else.

This is not based on a survey of a few thousand people but on detailed analysis on the internet activities of over eight million UK households, so it seems likely that the predictions are accurate.

Experian Hitwise spokesperson, James Murray, explained that with Hull at the top of the league and Doncaster in fifth place, Yorkshire is going to be a county in which safe shopping online is particularly popular this year.

Mr Murray pointed out that while the big UK cities like London, Birmingham and Manchester may have much higher populations, the amount of time and money actually spent online per person in all of these places will be lower than in Hull.

In total about 2.1 billion web site visits will be conducted by UK consumers in the run up to December 25th and with sales starting early this year, it seems that the uptick of e-commerce usage will continue well into 2012.

Although the list is capped by Hull, it seems that in general the southern cities are more widely represented, with most communities in the north of the country failing to appear in any position of note.

While consumers who live in the UK's cities have a good chance of being able to access broadband connections to simplify the online shopping experience, the more rural areas are still relatively underserviced in this area. Despite this, the cost of UK internet connections is still one of the lowest in the world, so there are few obstacles preventing people from getting online if broadband is available in their area.