The home shopping frenzy saw traffic to Amazon’s UK site jump 32% last year, reaching more than 6.5 billion visits, making the site not only the most popular ecommerce hub but also beating the likes of Twitter and Instagram as shopping platforms dominated the 100 most visited sites of the year.
According to an analysis by The UK Domain, using online data provided by SemRush, Amazon witnessed the largest growth in traffic of any site, with eBay, Argos, Tesco, Currys and Gumtree also seeing visitor numbers soar in 2020, and ecommerce platforms representing a quarter of the top 100 most visited sites.
In total 46.6 million people used the Internet daily in Britain, a rise of 1.5 million on the previous year, with Google.com ranking number one in the “hits” parade on 31 billion visits in the UK alone, compared to 2018 when attracted 8 billion.
However, it was not all about online shopping, with the BBC overtaking Facebook for the first time, up 10% to 8.8 billion visits, to be second in the chart, as the public scrambled to find out the latest coronavirus news.
The report suggests that the impact of fake news has damaged Facebook’s reputation, driving the demand for more reliable news as the pandemic played out. In fact, social media accounted for less traffic in 2020 than it did in 2019 in the top 100.
The rest of the top ten are: Wikipedia (on 8.6 billion visits); Facebook (7.8bn); YouTube (7.55bn); Amazon (6.6bn); Google.co.uk (4.64bn); eBay (4.11bn); Pornhub (exact number not detailed); and finally Mail Online (2.18bn).
Alongside the rise in ecommerce, 2020 also saw visits to the NHS website double, while the UK Government website’s traffic has increased by 414 million since 2019, due to the British public’s need to stay up to date.
Another industry that has benefited from the pandemic in terms of increased website traffic is the property market. In 2020, Rightmove had 1 billion website visits, an increase of 188 million since 2018.
As the UK spends more time at home, the desire for a more suitable house, or needing more space to accommodate working from home may explain this development, the report concludes.
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