E-commerce in the United Kingdom

E-commerce

Internet access

According to the British Office for National Statistics, in 2017 90% of households in Great Britain had internet access, with the highest levels of connectivity being in London and the southeast of England, both at 94%. Household internet access has been growing in the UK, and since 2006 it has grown by 32%, with increases across all regions and countries. The largest rise was in Scotland, increasing from 48% in 2006 to 90% in 2017. As of 2018, 90% of adults in the UK were internet users, a slight growth of 1% from the previous year. However, out of the 10% of adults who aren't internet users, 8.4% of them have never used the internet (and more than half were aged 75 or older). When it comes to age, the internet is most used by younger generations. Almost every person (99%) aged between 16 and 34 were internet users in 2018. However, that percentage drops to 44% for people aged 75 years and over. In 2017, 78% of adults aged 16 to 75 and older used the internet away from home or work. In terms of how people access the internet, 73% of them do so using a mobile phone or smartphone, a number that has more than doubled since 2011, when that rate was 36%. The second most popular devices are laptops and tablets (43%), followed by other handheld devices (such as MP3 or e-book readers) used by 14% of people. The most popular internet activity in the UK in 2017 was emailing (82%), followed by finding information about goods and services (71%), and reading online news, newspapers or magazines (64% -  a figure that has tripled in a decade). Internet banking is also a popular internet activity, and it rose by 33% since 2007, reaching 63% of adults in 2017. As of July 2018, the most popular search engines in the UK were Google (82.85%), followed by Bing (12.1%), Yahoo! (2.53%), MSN (1.57%) and DuckDuckGo (0.57%).

E-commerce market

According to the Office for National Statistics, online shopping has been constantly growing in the UK. The British e-commerce market is by far the biggest in Europe. With a total value of US$ 207 billion, it is worth almost twice as much the second biggest market, France (US$ 108 billion). In 2017, B2C e-commerce turnover in the UK was GBP 13.7 billion (US$ 17.6 billion). That represented a 13.65% increase from the previous year, and a growth rate of 14.3% is predicted for 2018, which means e-commerce in the UK could be worth US$ 20.6 billion by the end of 2018. Almost half of online consumers in the UK use their mobile phone or tablet to search for products and then use their desktop to place the order. However, almost 59% of digital buyers in the UK made online purchases using their smartphone in 2017.

E-commerce sales and customers

Research shows that over half of online UK consumers feel there is more choice online, but that doesn't mean they only make their purchases on the internet. In fact, according to the Ecommerce Foundation, 93% of online shoppers also shop in-store. During holiday season e-commerce rises substantially in the UK. In 2017, there were 45.36 million e-commerce users in the UK, a number that is expected to grow to 49.42 million by 2021. The average revenue per user was US$ 1,639.24, which is also predicted to grow, reaching US$ 2,251.82 in 2021. As for age groups, younger people tend to be more active shopping on the internet than older people, but those aged between 55 and 64 have had the largest rise in the last decade, a 30% rise since 2008, reaching 75% by the end of 2017. On the other hand, the age group with the smallest rise in online shopping was those aged 25 to 34 years, with growth of 17%, reaching 89% in 2017. In 2017, 77% of adults had bought goods or services online, a rise of 24% since 2008. The most popular purchases were clothes and sports goods, bought by 56% of people in 2017. Household goods were the next most popular items, purchased by 50% of people, followed by holiday accommodation, which was purchased by 44%. Most people buy from local sellers, with 93% of adults who had bought online in 2017, doing so from online sellers in the UK, while 31% had bought from sellers in the EU countries and 31% had bought from the rest of the world. Credit cards are the most popular payment method, with almost 40% of all online transactions being paid using a credit card. Over 30% of online purchases are paid with debit cards. Another popular online payment method is PayPal which, along with credit and debit cards, represent 96% of all online payments.

Social media

Social media is a common part of everyday life in the United Kingdom. According to Statista, at the beginning of 2018 there were 44 million active social media users in the UK, which represents a penetration rate of almost 65%. As of July 2018, the leading social media platforms in the United Kingdom ranked by market share were Facebook (63.76%), followed by Twitter (14.89%), Pinterest (10.38%), YouTube (3.96%), Instagram (3.23%), Tumblr (1.81%), reddit (0.69%) and LinkedIn (0.67%). Facebook has been the most popular social network in the UK throughout recent years. It is particularly popular among those aged between 25-34, of which 5.6 million women and 5.6 million men were using the social media platform in January 2018. The total number of Facebook users in 2018 was 32 million (and is expected to rise to about 41 million by 2021), making it the largest platform by far, followed by Twitter (with 20 million users), YouTube (19.1 million), LinkedIn (19 million), Instagram (14 million), Snapchat (13.6 million), Google+ (12.6 million), Pinterest (10.3 million), Tumblr (9 million) and reddit (6.6 million). With a growing number of social media users, businesses are focusing more on those platforms to market their products and services. The most popular social networks for businesses are Facebook (which is favoured due to the high number of users), followed by YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter.