Depledge Design

Home	Sunday, 06 July 2008

The latest Nielsen Global Online Survey on Internet shopping habits showed that there are now 875 million active shoppers on the Internet, up from 627 million two years ago, with UK shoppers being the second most active market, with 97% percent of those with Internet access have made purchases online.

The biggest percentage online shoppers is found in South Korea, where 99 percent of those with Internet access have used it to shop. Next comes the UK' followed by Germany (97%), Japan (97%) and the U.S. issurprisingly only in eighth place, at 94%.

The most popular Internet purchases are Books (41% purchased in the past 3 months), Clothing/Accessories/Shoes (36%), Videos / DVDs / Games (24%), Airline Tickets (24%) and Electronic Equipment (23%).

In the UK in the last three months, 45 percent of Internet shoppers bought books online, followed by Videos/DVDs/Games (44%), Clothing/Accessories/Shoes (38%), Music (37%) and one in four Internet shoppers also purchased and Airline tickets/Reservations online.

Credit cards are far and away the most popular method of payment for online purchases - 60% of global online consumers used their credit card for a recent online purchase, while one in four online consumers chose PayPal. Of those paying with a credit card, more than half (53%) used Visa.

Crucially for anyone running an online shop, according to Nielsen, online shoppers tend to stick to the shopping sites they are familiar with, with 60 percent saying they buy mostly from the same site. This reinforces the importance of creating a good shopping experience for customers which will lead to repeat business - if the customer is happy with you, they will tend to stick with you.

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