Online Banking Sector Grows By 65%

The online banking sector continues to show strong growth in the UK with traffic to the sector increasing by 65% in one year, according to the latest report from Hitwise. Banking web sites now account for 1.42% of all Web traffic, up from 0.86% a year ago.

This strong growth in the banking sector comes at a time when UK consumers are increasingly being warned of high levels of personal debt and a pension 'timebomb'.

Dutch Financial services company ING last month announced the arrival of its online bank in the UK ( www.ingdirect.co.uk ) with a multi-million pound launch spend. Early indications suggest that the launch has generated reasonable interest - ING Direct was only the 37th most visited banking site last week, accounting for just 0.46% of traffic, but a good percentage have bookmarked the page (7.34% of visitors) and an average visit duration of 5 minutes and 53 seconds indicates more than just a glance at what the company has to offer.

Egg is still the most popular Internet-only bank with 5.9% share of traffic to the online banking sector.

Hitwise's clickstream data gives interesting clues to the way consumers get to sites, as well as their behaviour in comparing competing offers. 9.36% of traffic to ING Direct came from MoneySupermarket www.moneysupermarket.com , a site that helps consumers find the best and most competitive financial products online, and 1.42% of traffic came from Egg www.egg.com . Of traffic leaving ING Direct, 2.56% of traffic went to Egg, and 1.71% of traffic went to Cahoot www.cahoot.com .

Internet users between the ages of 25 and 44 are most active at managing their finances online, accounting for 56% of visitors to the banking sector. Females make up 46% of visitors, with Monday the most popular day for logging on to banking web sites [for sites in many other sectors, including MrWeb, it's Tuesday].

Most visited Internet-only banks, week ending 7th June 2003

Overall Rank	Name	Domain	Market share of sector	% of bookmarks	Average visit time
5	Egg	www.egg.com	5.91%	0.18%	5:23
16	Cahoot	www.cahoot.co.uk	1.39%	1.54%	2:00
22	Smile - The Internet Bank	www.smile.co.uk	1.21%	1.32%	3:22
27	Intelligent Finance	www.if.com	0.86%	0.86%	3:10
37	ING Direct UK	www.ingdirect.co.uk	0.46%	7.34%	5:53

Hitwise works with a wide range of local partner ISPs and collects anonymous information about the usage habits of more than 25 million Internet users worldwide, covering home, work and educational usage. It is headquartered in Melbourne, Australia and operates in the UK, US, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore.

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

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