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.

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.