Top 50 online retailers in the UK

The top 50 UK online retailers, as ranked by visits, according to the latest ‘Hot Shops’ list compiled by Experian Hitwise and the IMRG.


This quarter’s Hot Shops list is as vibrant and competitive as we’ve ever seen it, with the top brands vying for control of the online marketplace.
Amazon and Argos maintain their spots as the top two retailers online, but the rest of the list is a churning flux of brands with lots of movement in the top 50.
Apple is going from strength to strength, going up from fourth place to third this quarter.
More significantly, Apple has leapt up from 11th position in August last year, bypassing some of the strongest retail brands in the UK. The success of the new iPad, not to mention continued demand for the iPhone contributed hugely to Apple’s rise up the rankings this year.
John Lewis has also had a notably strong year, climbing two positions this quarter to break into the top 10 online retailers, but also jumping nine places since last year.
The success of John Lewis’ advertising campaign “Never Knowingly Undersold” has received over 900,000 views on YouTube and is in part responsible for the brand breaking into the top 10 online retailers.
Since Avatar, 3D films have been drawing in audiences to cinemas with Toy Story 3 and Shrek Forever After in particular helping Cineworld (up six places), Vue Entertainment (up nine places) and Odeon (up four places) from the previous quarter.
Travel sites Thomson, Expedia, Lastminute.com, and Thomas Cook were all up for the quarter, but down compared to last year. During the summer holiday season it’s not a big surprise to see the travel brands coming up in the rankings. The year-on-year declining trend might be explained by reports that last minute bookings are up this year, with consumers visiting travel sites much later in the season than last year.
The IMRG-Experian Hitwise Hot Shops List of the top 50 UK e-retailers* is the key indicator of online merchant performance.
The List is published quarterly and tracks popularity, as indicated by visits, of those selling goods and services within the IMRG Capgemini Index Classification. This List is based on July 2010 data.
IMRG’s CEO, James Roper, comments: “As retail competition intensifies in the online space it is evident that the e-retail market leaders, both pureplay and multi-channel, continue to flourish online with the top 10 showing very little movement since the last quarter.
Despite significant movement in the top 50, there is only one new entrant this quarter with House of Fraser joining the strong list of multi-channel retailers, which now account for two thirds of the Hot Shops List.”
Robin Goad, Director of Research at Experian Hitwise comments: “The rise of Apple over the past 12 months to number three in the list has been pretty staggering, especially considering Apple’s niche in the technology sector, where the other retailers in the top four sell millions of products to a much broader spectrum of consumers.
With people going away over the summer on holiday, this is a lean quarter for the supermarket chains. However, when you compare year-on-year rankings, all of the supermarket sites have gone up since August last year which demonstrates an increasing trend of online grocery shopping.”
www.imrg.org
www.hitwise.com/uk
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