Ecommerce sales soar to new hights

Online sales increase by 57% in 2006

Now that the tills are quieter and the crowds have diminished after an exceptional online year it is the time for a little reflection.

2006 saw another record year for online sales in the UK, with no signs that the consumer’s love affair with on line shopping is diminishing, quite the reverse.

IMRG have been monitoring online trends for many years, and have seen they have seen exceptional growth year on year. In 2004 the retail spend online was £14.5bn, this increased by 32% to £19.2bn in 2005 and by a staggering 57% in 2006 to £30.2bn with over £42bn expected in sales in 2007. This equates to nearly 15% of the total UK spend on shopping.

In fact the market growing so rapidly that many established high street stores are considering increasing their investment in on-line activities after a record 2006 say market intelligence company, Hitwise.

Leading the activity is Waitrose who saw traffic to their website more than double in 2006, HMV saw increases of 50% and Marks and Spencer saw web traffic increase by 25%. In the case of M&S, overall trading figures were up by 5.6% overall but online earnings jumped by 70%

There was more good news for M&S earlier in the year when its website topped a new ranking of websites that were most user friendly. Web usability consultants Webcredible assessed 20 of the most popular High Street retailers to see how easy it was to use their sites. Other stores evaluated included Currys, Debenhams, Woolworths, Boots and The Early Learning Centre. M&S topped the survey with a score of 81% whilst Clinton Cards were at the other end with a score of just 25%

This high score relating to the ease of use of their website no doubt goes a long way towards explaining the phenomenal growth in Marks & Spencer’s online growth last year.

This all came to a peak at Christmas where online spending rose by 54% over 2005, increasing from £5bn in 2005 to £7.6bn for the 10 weeks before Christmas.

All of this only serves to demonstrate the consumer's growing love of shopping online, with all the benefits that it brings – no hassle having to find a parking space, no fighting your way through crowds of people or waiting in long queues at check-outs, and best of all, being able to shop when you want to shop, not when the store decides it will open its doors.

For the UK small business, it is essential to take advantage of this switch from traditional shopping as soon as possible, otherwise there is a really big danger that they will be left behind, their traditional customer base migrating to stores and suppliers which can service them in the on-line world.