Most popular online goods Great Britain 2020

In the UK, 55 percent of the population shop online and the consumers’ favorite item to buy online were clothes and sports goods. According to the 2020 results of an annual interview conducted by the Office for National Statistics, 32 percent of individuals in the United Kingdom (UK) purchased deliveries from restaurants, fast-food chains or catering services. Services and products least popular with online consumers were bicycles, mopeds, cars or other spare parts, which only less than 10 percent of households choose to purchase online.

Retail shopping online

In the UK’s highly mature e-commerce market, one prominent sector where online flourishes is retail. As of 2018, online accounted for more than 20 percent of all retail industry sales in the United Kingdom. Clothing and footwear items proved their popularity with consumers yet again and displayed the highest growth in online sales as recently as June 2019.

Shopping online on smartphones

With rapid changes in the ways that individuals integrate online into their lives, online shopping changes patterns as well. More and more smartphone owners seem to be using their devices for buying goods online. According to Ipsos Media’s tech tracker surveys, 44 percent of consumers were shopping online via their smartphones in the first quarter of 2019.

Goods and services ranked by share of individuals who purchased online in Great Britain in 2020

Characteristic	Share of respondents
Clothes (including sports clothing), shoes and accessories	55%
Deliveries from restaurants, fast-food chains or catering services	32%
Printed books, magazines or newspapers	29%
Furniture, home accessories or gardening products	28%
Computers, tablets, mobile phones or accessories	24%
Children's toys or childcare items	22%
Cosmetics, beauty or wellness products	22%
Cleaning products or personal hygiene products	18%
Consumer electronics, for example TVs, stereos, cameras or household appliances	18%
Sports goods (excluding sports clothing)	17%
Food or beverages from stores, or from meal-kit providers	13%
Medicine or dietary supplements such as vitamins	13%
Physical copies of films or series	13%
Physical copies of music	12%
Bicycles, mopeds, cars, or other vehicles or their spare parts	8%

Loading statistic...

Download

Source

Show detailed source information?

Already a member?

Source

Use Ask Statista Research Service

Release date

August 2020

More information

Region

United Kingdom (Great Britain)

Survey time period

2020

Number of respondents

1,800**

Age group

16 years and older

Special properties

bought within the last 12 months.

Method of interview

Online interview

Supplementary notes

* The source indicates: "The source of this information is the Opinions and Lifestyle Survey (OLS). The OLS is a multi-purpose survey developed by ONS for use by government departments, other public bodies, charities, academics and the media. It provides a fast, cost effective and reliable way of obtaining information on topics too brief to warrant their own survey."
** The Opinions and Lifestyle Survey is carried out by interviewing a nationally representative sample of households in Great Britain. About 1,800 households are sampled each month and estimates are subject to sampling variability, as are those from all sample surveys.

Citation formats