British Workers Take Advantage of Net Access

One-quarter of the U.K. workforce is connected to the Internet, NetValue found, and Britain has more than twice as many work Internet users than home users. According to NetValue, there are 7.8 million people that regularly using the Internet at work, compared to 31.4 million U.K. workers. At home, 14.75 million British people have home Internet access.

British Internet users spend more time on certain Web sites at work than at home. Online visitors to Tesco, Egg and Lloyds TSB spend much more time on those sites at work than at home. Lloydstsb.com’s customers, for example, visited the Web site on average 10.7 times per month while at work, whereas home visits amounted to only 4.1 times per month.

NetValue also reports that British workers are accessing a large number of Web sites with non-work-related content from their desktop PCs. Bbc.co.uk experienced 2.3 million visitors from work during October 2001, Amazon.co.uk 1.5 million visitors and friendsreuinited.co.uk had nearly 1.5 million people access their Web sites while at work.

As for e-commerce, NetValue’s Buying Power Index (BPI), which measures the online purchasing power of visitors to Web sites, found that Britain’s high street shops have been attracting the most business, as nine of the top 10 Web sites with the highest BPI belong to established retail brands.

WH Smiths, Argos, Comet, Currys, Littlewoods and Woolworths lead the BPI. Buy.com and qvcuk.com were the only pure-play Internet retailers to make the top 10.

In October 2001, whsmith.co.uk recorded a BPI of 612, demonstrating that the domain’s visitors purchased six times as much online as the average Internet user, while argos.co.uk showed a BPI of 517 during the same period.