e-Commerce Above Estimates But Down On Year

E-commerce accounted for 18% of turnover in 2012 down from 19% in 2011 but above the 2008 estimate of 14%. Business to business electronic data interchange (EDI) sales made up 67% of the total of e-commerce sales and the rest was accounted for by business to household website sales (33%). The website sales accounted for 6%, or £164bn, of business turnover in 2012 compared to 5%, or £134bn, in 2012. Broadband Internet had reached 95% of businesses and 82% had a website.

The largest companies still dominate e-commerce sales with businesses of 1000 or over employees accounting for 51% of all e-commerce sales. Total e-commerce sales amounted to £335bn in 2008, now sales have reached £492bn. Average annual growth between 2008 and 2012 was 10%. Total growth over the period 2008-2012 was 47%.

The highest levels of total e-commerce by industry sector were reported in wholesale and manufacturing with £172bn and £157bn respectively. The accommodation and food services sector reported low sales by comparison with £9.1bn but reported the highest proportional increase of 57% annually.

Website sales have reported steady growth in recent years. In 2008 13% of businesses sold over a website reporting sales valuing £92bn. In 2012 18% of businesses sold over a website with sales of £164bn. The total value of website sales increased to 6% of total business turnover. The largest companies accounted for half of all sales. The smallest businesses accounted for only 0.7% of the total 6% of turnover from website sales.

The wholesale sector reported the highest amount of website sales with £50bn. The retail sector reported the highest proportion of businesses making sales over a website with 34% and construction the lowest with 7%.

EDI sales decreased by £23bn in 2012 to £328bn from £351bn. EDI accounted for 12% of total business turnover in the UK in 2012 (the decrease may be accounted for by things like sampling variability). Only 6% of businesses sold by EDI while three times as many businesses used websites compared to EDI but sales values over EDI were double at £328bn compared to £168bn.

The manufacturing sector made to highest amount of sales in 2012 with £145bn. The wholesale sector followed with £122bn but also saw the biggest decrease in EDI sales value down 14% or £20bn from £142bn in 2011.

Social media or websites and applications that enable users to share content and participate in social networking has enabled businesses to change the way they interact with customers. In 2012, 44% of businesses reported they had used social media such as Facebook and LinkedIn. Nearly a quarter had used a blog or a microblog such as Twitter. Multimedia content sharing websites like YouTube or Flickr were used by 15% of businesses. Half of large businesses have content sharing websites. The ICT sector had the highest rate of use with 53% and transport and storage the lowest with 5%.

In 2012, 68 of businesses provided NIC details online and 89% of businesses completed their VAT returns over the Internet.

Growth In e-Commerce Sales

E-commerce accounted for 19% of sales represented in the Annual Business Survey (ABS) total turnover in 2011. It has increased from 18% in 2010. Sales from websites represented 5% of total turnover compared with 4.6% in 2010. Other information in the ONS statistical bulletin says that 93% of businesses had broadband Internet and 81% had a website. Of the businesses with broadband 5.8% had a broadband connection of 100Mbps or more and 34% of the larger businesses had high speed broadband. Members of staff were provided with a portable device of some kind in 56% of cases be it a portable computer, smartphone or personal digital assistant (PDA). The survey is conducted annually to show the importance and values of e-commerce and the use of ICT by businesses in Britain.

Internet Sales And Connectivity Still On The Up

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).