Some internet statistics

Summary

It will be little or no surprise to anyone that use of the internet is growing. What may be surprising is the rate at which this is happening and the kind of people who are using it.

There are two important things to remember when looking at internet statistics:

1. They are never completely up to date because of the fast-moving nature of the market
2. No two sources agree completely, either because they have taken their measuremants at different times, or because they use different methodology.

Just to give you a picture, we have included a few different sets of figures / analyses. Click on any of these to go to that section.

Basic UK user figures
Where are they accessing the internet from?
Who are they (age and gender)?
What are they doing online (purpose of access)?

Basic UK users

UK 59,889,407 population

36,059,100 Internet users in Aug/05, 60.2 % penetration

Source: Nielsen//NetRatings

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Internet Access

13 million households online

GB Households with home access to the Internet, July

Over half (55 per cent) of households in Great Britain (13.0 million) could access the Internet from home in July 2005. In the three months prior to interview, 57 per cent of adults had used the Internet and 57 per cent of these had bought or ordered goods, tickets or services. People aged 25-44 were most likely to buy online (65 per cent), while people aged 65 and over were least likely to buy online (39 per cent).

The most common place to access the Internet was at home (86 per cent), 51 per cent accessed at work, 29 per cent at another person's home, 10 per cent at a place of education and 9 per cent at a public library. The main means of access was via a desktop computer (93 per cent) followed by a laptop (31 per cent) and mobile phone (15 per cent).

Of those adults who had ever used the Internet, 91 per cent had used a search engine to find information, 81 per cent sent an email with an attachment, 23 per cent posted a message in a chat room or newsgroup, 17 per cent had used peer to peer file sharing, such as exchanging music and films and 13 per cent had created a web page.

In the three months prior to interview, of those who used the Internet, a higher proportion of men (47 per cent) than women (42 per cent) had used it for Internet banking, while more women (30 per cent) than men (17 per cent) had used the Internet for school, college and university related activities.

Source: National Statistics Omnibus Survey

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Percentage of those questioned who had used the internet within the last three months

Internet usage among genders is very close, with men only just outstripping women in usage.

As would be expected, usage is higher among younger age groups but is still high up to age 54 and is growing among ages 55 and over.

Source: Office for National Statistics

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Purpose online

By far the most popular activities online are looking for information about goods or services, travel and accomodation or using email.

This makes the clear point that even though 57% of customers are buying or ordering goods or services online, which is already a huge number, even those that aren't buying online are researching online before contacting a company to purchase (86%).

Source: Office for National Statistics

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