When talking to people I find they do not realise how much the online population has increased over the last few years. Nearly everyone has a social networking profile on one of the main websites such as Facebook and Myspace. It reminds me of when I almost had to convince businesses that they needed to have a web presence, you wouldn’t believe it but many people used to struggle to see the benefit of a 24/7 shop front.

This used to be one of the regular challenges of working for a website design and development company. Now the challenge is to communicate and explain how many people are online. Yes owning your own website is great, but what is the point of having a website if no one will find it?

Below are some figures I have collated that demonstrate how busy the online arena is in 2008, over the last few years massive growth has occurred due to broadband becoming readily available to nearly every house hold. Long gone are the days of £120 monthly phone bills and blocking the home phone line with dial up internet access!

• 44% of UK Internet users who were surveyed said they had shopped online for groceries, and in London nearly this figure is nearly at 50%. Eight out of ten people surveyed had visited a shops website first before visiting in person. – Nielsen
• A US survey in May 2008 conducted by Nielsen, more than half the people said they purchased from retailers that have websites they frequently visit.
• 58% of respondents said they would choose the Internet to research their products instead of asking their friends and family.
• 89.44% of UK searches happen through Google.com or .co.uk – October, 2008
• 27 Million People Watched More Than 3 Billion Videos Online in the U.K. in June 2008
• Worldwide Visitation to DailyMail.co.uk up 153 percent from Year Ago – Jan 2008
• UK participation in social networking usage was revealed to be the highest in Europe, with 24.9 million unique visitors – 78% of the total UK online population – now belonging to the country’s social networking community. – October 2007
• eMarketer estimates that the number of Internet users in the UK reached 36.8 million in 2007, and will pass 38 million in 2008—equivalent to 62.6% of the entire population.
• Almost all adults (93%) aged under 70 who had a degree or equivalent qualification were estimated to have access to the Internet in their home.
• In 2008, 16.46 million UK households had Internet access. This represented 65 % of households and an increase of 1.23 million households since 2007. These estimates are derived from the 2008 National Statistics Omnibus survey.
• There were 41,817,847 Internet users in the UK (representing 68.6% of the population) in June 2008, according to Internet World Stats. This was up by 171.5% compared to 2000.
• 2007 was another boom year for the Internet in the UK. Almost 37 million people went online in an average month, representing over 60% of the population.
• Comparing May 2008 to May 2007, the Sports, Online Video and Social Networking categories showed double digit increases in their share of traffic coming directly from Google (10%, 25% and 32% respectively).
• UK searchers conducted an average of 124 searches per searcher during the month, or 4.1 searches per day. – June 2008
• Nielsen//NetRatings looked at online activity in the UK across more sites and found that one in six people (2,542,000) online visited a sports or gambling website during the first week of the World Cup.
• Surfing the Web has topped watching TV in terms of Britons favourite pastime, according a Daily Mail story about a new Google survey. The survey of more than 1,000 adults ages 16 to 64 found that on average, residents in the UK spend 164 minutes online every day compared to 148 minutes watching television.
• In 2008, 16 million households in Great Britain (65%) had Internet access, according to the Office for National Statistics. This is an increase of just over 1 million households (7%) over the last year and 5 million households (46%) since 2002.
• Retail e-commerce sales in the UK are predicted to reach £44.9 billion ($80.8 billion) in 2012, up from £19.5 billion ($38 billion) in 2008, according to Verdict Research data cited in Internet Retailing.
• eMarketer estimates that B2C e-commerce in the UK will reach £94.2 billion ($169.6 billion) in 2012, up from £59.8 billion ($116.6 billion) in 2008.
• The majority of the UK’s advertising growth in 2007 came on the Internet, according to Ofcom. Online ad spending had risen an average of 70.2% in each of the past five years, and reached £2.8 billion ($5.6 billion) in 2007.
• Buying goods and services is now the third-most-popular online activity in the UK behind accessing information and communicating with others, according to June 2008 data from UK trade group the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA).

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