UK Users Most Likely to Visit E-Commerce Sites

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From the beginning, the United States has been the worldwide leader in e-commerce, but data from NetValue found that Britain had the highest percentage of home Internet users visiting an e-commerce site in May 2001.

NetValue's data is drawn from monitoring Internet use in eight countries (Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and the United States). In may 2001, 75.9 percent of U.K. home Internet users visited an e-tailing site, with 42.1 percent making secure connections. In the United States, 73.9 percent of home Internet users visited an e-commerce site, with just 28.8 percent making a secure connection.

The research also found that, although Sweden and Denmark have the largest proportion of households online, Swedes and Danes are least likely to shop online. Only 8.1 percent of Danish visitors and 6.9 percent of Swedish visitors to an e-commerce Web site actually entered a secure area of a site.

The top e-commerce site in Europe in May 2001, however, was Germany's Amazon.de, which was visited by more than 2.5 million unique visitors. Lastminute.com was the only travel site to make the top 10. It was visited by more than 1 million unique visitors in Europe.

Scandinavia continues to lead Europe and even the United States in Internet penetration, according to NetValue. In May 2001, NetValue counted 57.6 percent of Swedish households as online, along with 55.5 percent of Danish households. Of the eight countries measured, the United States was third, with 50.6 percent of households connected. Britain was fifth, with 38.4 percent of households connected.

Spain had fewest households online of the eight countries, but Spanish users spent more time online and viewed more pages than any other European country. On average Spanish users spent 9.4 hours online and viewed 924 pages in May 2001, NetValue found.