Online Shopping Growing Fast

Online shopping is currently the fastest growing part of retailing with mobile searching using a smartphone or tablet PC, such as the iPad, now accounting for over 10% of searches.

According to the new Online Retail Monitor (ORM) report from the British Retail Consortium, online retail search volumes in the first quarter this year were up nearly a third compared with the same time last year.

It’s the rise in mobile retail search traffic though that is outpacing overall growth, with a rise of of some 181% in the same period. Mobile searches, using such as a smartphone or iPad, now account for over 10% of retail searches.

As Stephen Robertson, Director General, British Retail Consortium, said “The star performer is mobile. A three fold increase reveals customers are taking to smartphone and tablet shopping very rapidly.”

Whilst pure online retailers have seen good growth, those retailers who offer multi-channel shopping routes, usually stores and internet (eg John Lewis, Tesco and Marks and Spencer), have seen the most significant growth year on year.

MoneyHighStreet.com comment: “Clearly for many online shopping is far more convenient and easy. In order to save money, many are turning to the internet to help compare prices and find special offers and voucher codes. Supermarket online shopping is growing as all the major supermarkets now offer improving sites to ease the experience and once you’ve prepared a shopping list you can it for future shops, adding or removing items as you need to.

You can also use a site such as Mysupermarket.co.uk to help you compare prices and save money on your online shop. It will tell you how much the items on your list would have cost across the different supermarkets. For more info on this see our Mysupermarket.co.uk review.