Matt Bullock
30 August 2010
Online shopping has been gaining popularity rapidly across the UK. More than half of Britons now shop online for everything from televisions to shoes, spending an average of £71 online every month. Even the nation's oldest shoppers, nicknamed "silver surfers," are getting in on the action - though not at the rates that etailers would like.
More than 38 million British adults are now online, with 30 million logging on every day, according to the Office of National Statistics. Approximately 1 million of these are "silver surfers" - people over 65 - but the elderly, along with the widowed and people on lower incomes, are least likely to have ever connected to the internet, the figures show.
The ONS figures for 2010 showed that 31 million people have bought goods or services on the internet in the past 12 months, meaning that Britons are increasingly taking advantage of the convenience and cost-effectiveness of online shopping. Unfortunately, people who cannot log on miss access to some of the UK's best deals, which largely come to ecommerce platforms selling items at big discounts.
"Since 2006 we have seen a significant increase in the number of people using the Internet, with the number of adults accessing the Internet ever day almost doubling to just over 30 million, though the UK is some way off from being completely online," Mark Williams from the Office for National Statistics said. "Usage is closely linked with a number of socio-economic and demographic indicators with those less educated and on lower incomes less likely to access the web."
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