February 15 2008
January’s top 50 UK e-retailers
What’s hot and what’s not in retail for January
The Hitwise eighth quarterly Hot Shops List is notable for its lack of movement either up or down of the e-retailers it tracks. Thirty of the fifty were within three places of their rankings in November and of these, twenty-three were within two places and fifteen were within one position and the only new entrant was DVD distributor in at 37.
Amazon.co.uk (1), Argos (2) and Play (3) led the field as usual, while Apple, in the number four slot, achieved its highest ranking to date, up from 5 last time.
As expected at this time of year, travel companies performed well, with all nine listed improving their rankings. Thomson Holidays (7) was up six places to jump back into the top ten, while the fastest riser was Thomas Cook (23) up twenty-five spots since November. Easyjet (11) was up eight places.
IMRG's CEO, James Roper, comments:
"The Hot Shops List gives us a fascinating insight into the big picture of what is going on in e-retail. For example, at the beginning of 2007 we were astonished to see that half of the UK's top 100 retailers still had no transactional website. But within the past year, a swath of household names have appeared on the List for the first time, including Marks & Spencer, Dixons, Sainsbury's, Boots, Topshop, IKEA, O2, River Island, GAME and Odeon Cinemas. Having observed the market for a couple of decades, I find the pace at which some retailers are engaging with the internet still seems glacial, but all serious players will be trading online by the end of 2008."
Hitwise's Director of Research, Robin Goad, comments:
"Following a somewhat disappointing pre-Christmas period for online retail, the UK experienced a record breaking online sales season that extended into January. UK Internet searches for post-Christmas sales more than tripled this year, and the online properties of high street retailers in particular benefited from this surge in traffic. The exception to this rule was Play.com, which received a huge amount of sales traffic and placed higher in the list this year than for the same quarter last year. Other successes included Apple, which reached its highest ever ranking thanks to the publicity surrounding the launch of the Macbook Air, and Thomson Holidays, which received a seasonal boost to become the most visited travel website on the list."
For all you e-tail pop pickers here’s the top 50 run-down. “Not half” as Alan 'Fluff' Freeman would say
The IMRG-Hitwise Hot Shops List:
1 Amazon UK
2 Argos
3 Play.com
4 Apple
5 Tesco.com
6 Amazon.com
7 Thomson Holidays
8 Tesco Direct
9 Dell EMEA
10 Expedia.co.uk
11 easyJet
12 Marks & Spencer
13 Next
14 Currys
15 lastminute.com
16 HMV.com
17 RyanAir
18 British Airways
19 John Lewis
20 Comet UK
21 PC World
22 Ticketmaster UK
23 Thomas Cook
24 Ebuyer
25 GAME
26 O2 Shop
27 ASOS
28 Debenhams
29 B&Q Online
30 Littlewoods
31 Symantec Store
32 The Orange Shop
33 ASDA
34 Woolworths UK
35 Boots
36 Odeon Cinemas
37 LoveFilm.com
38 IKEA
39 Screwfix Direct
40 QVCUK.com
41 TopShop.co.uk
42 Carphone Warehouse
43 Sainsbury's
44 Thomsonfly.com
45 HP
46 Flybe.com
47 Maplin Electronics
48 Dixons Online
49 Apple iPod & Tunes
50 River Island
