The figure represents 60% of the UK's internet audience, more than in any other European country in the survey. The figure is an increase of 3.7m people in the UK on the same month in December 2001, when 9.1m surfers visited an online retail website.
The UK is Europe's biggest e-commerce market and, with 70% of British browsers saying that they then go on to make a purchase online, it has the highest conversion rate of surfers to actual purchasers.
"These figures represent visitors, not necessarily buyers," commented analyst Tom Ewing. "But the UK's conversion rate of browsers to buyers is also the highest in Europe, so it's a safe bet that actual online spend has risen over the year. The figures suggest that shopping online is now an everyday part of more than half of the British online population, particularly at Christmas. In fact, the UK has become Europe's capital of e-commerce."
The UK's top e-commerce sites in 2002 included global brands Amazon and eBay, but for the second year running Argos was the UK's top high-street retailer on the web in December with more than 2.5m unique visitors. Kelkoo.co.uk, the French price comparison site, appeared in the Nielsen//NetRatings category in July 2002 for the first time and had achieved nearly 2m visitors by December. Dealtime.co.uk, a shopping assistant site, jumps into the top 10 from its position a year ago of 33rd.
The top 10 includes the highest number of UK high-street brands since Nielsen//NetRatings started researching the behaviour of consumers online.
Top 10 e-commerce sites in the UK, December 2002
1. (1) Amazon.co.uk/.com* 6,718,000
2. (2) eBay.co.uk/.com* 5,066,000
3. (3) Argos.co.uk 2,562,374
4. (4) Tesco.com 2,186,779
5. (-) Kelkoo.co.uk 1,894,000
6. (5) Comet.co.uk 1,458,945
7. (10) JohnLewis.com 1,237,070
8. (7) Currys.co.uk 1,126,089
9. (11) Dixons.co.uk 904,907
10 (33) Dealtime.co.uk 847,648
* .co.uk and .com sites combined and deduplicated for a "unique audience" figure
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