Internet sales in 2008 went up by 36.6% to £222.9bn from £163.2bn in 2007. These were comprised of £104.7bn website sales and £118.2bn electronic data interchange (EDI) sales. The Internet sales represented 9.8% of all sales of UK non-financial sector businesses. The proportion of businesses using the Internet for selling purposes went up to 15.2% in 2008 from 14.4% in 2007. Website sales accounted for 12.8%.
Employees are increasingly using the Internet more from their workplaces. There were 7.8m workplace users or 45.5% of employees (within the scope of the survey) in 2008. Internet access was available to 80% of people who used computers at work. New technologies are also being used more. Wireless LANs (WLAN) are increasing in number as is the adoption of radio frequency identification (RFID). This year is the first time RFID has been measured with 1.4% of businesses using the technology. The bigger companies of over 1000 employees (12.5%) used the technology more than the small businesses (1%).
The wholesale, retail and catering sector had the biggest piece of the pie with £106.6bn. The majority of sales were to customers in the UK at £281.3bn, 83% of the total. Sales to the EU totalled £36.8bn or 11% and sales to the rest of the world were £20.1bn. The number of businesses with a website increased to 73.5% in 2008, but only 12.6% used them for sales. The biggest proportion of them were in the post and telecommunications sector with 23.5%.
Mobile Internet connections are continuing to increase. The number of businesses using that kind of connection has increased to 37.6% while digital subscription remained the most popular connection method. The majority of businesses adopting mobile access are large businesses at over 87% with small businesses on 32%.
Businesses are using the Internet to obtain information (62%) and forms (58%) from the public authorities (66%). Size of business is again linked to interaction with public authorities. In 2008, 62% of businesses with 10-49 staff interact online compared with 87% of companies with over 1000 employees.
Supply chain management systems are used by more and more businesses. Enterprise resource planning systems are used by 6% with bigger businesses 10 times more likely to use ERP software than SMEs. Customer relationship management (CRM) systems are used by 14% to share information about customers and by 12.4% for information analysis for marketing.
These statistics are from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
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