UK's Top E-commerce Site

Online marketplace eBay has overtaken Amazon as the number one e-commerce site in the UK for the first time since Nielsen//NetRatings began reporting the behaviour of Briton's online population since March 2000.

Figures released recently by Nielsen//NetRatings show how the website has been steadily building its audience in the last few months. Since March 2002, the site has increased its audience by 160% to 6.8 million Britons. In the same period, Amazon's audience has grown by 28% to 6.1 million people. The growth in the Internet overall in the same period was only 7%.

In March 2003, visitors to eBay spent on average one hour and eleven minutes on the site. This is one of the longest amounts of time spent on any UK site, and underlines how the eBay platform works, as visitors return to the site to check the status of items they are selling or bidding for.

This is also shown in the amount of pages viewed per person, per month. Over a billion pages were viewed on eBay sites in the UK in March 2003, making it one of the few websites to achieve a billion page views in a month.

Tim Roe, Senior International Analyst at Nielsen//NetRatings said 'This is a very important development as the performance of the e-commerce category is one of the key indicators of the health of the Internet in general. The growth of eBay and Amazon, as two of the most profitable and successful players in this sector, is a significant sign of the potential of using the Internet's to reach and sell to consumers.'

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas unless otherwise stated.

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