Wildwood Research

Paris, February 16th 2012 – NetObserver®, the largest study of European internet users of its kind, conducted by Harris Interactive, reveals the nation’s favourite websites across 9 categories, as voted by UK internet users.

The NetObserver® study began in 1998, and is conducted online twice a year. It provides over 1,000 partner websites with a better understanding of user’s online behaviours and attitudes, offline behaviour and visitor satisfaction and engagement. This is just the second time the study has questioned internet users on their favourite sites, and covers the following categories: clothes, shoes and accessories retailers; cultural retailers; family; IT/High‐tech; motoring; multimedia retailers; music; travel‐tourism; and women’s interest.

The survey indicates the degree of customer satisfaction and loyalty expressed by an online community of over 300K respondents per year.

Motoring Sites

The highest rated Motoring website was autotrader.co.uk (29%) followed by the BBC’s topgear.com (11%).

Women’s Interests

The Daily Mail’s Femail section (7.3%) manages to just surpass Goodhousekeeping.co.uk (6.5%) for the favourite website in the Women’s interest category.

Family Sites

The Netmums.com community recently acquired by the group Aufeminin.com comes out on top as the favourite within the family category, whilst the next four, including Babycentre.co.uk, Mumsnet.com, bounty.com and netdoctor.co.uk share a close percentage of the votes between 8% and 9%.

IT Sites

The clear leader in the IT category is Apple.com taking almost 20%, a large percentage above its rival Microsoft.com with almost 6%. Other sites making an appearance are the online retailers of technical products such as PC World (6.8%). The rest of the list is compiled by online tech guides such as Cnet.com (7.1%) and Download.com (2.7%), who both belong to CBS Interactive. T3.com (4.3%) and Techradar.com (2.8%) feature too, both belonging to Future PLC.

Music Sites

Due to the usage of the leading video sharing platform, Youtube comes out as the clear leader for the music category with 29.2% of the votes. Itunes (16.6%) comes second, far above the free Swedish music provider Spotify.com (8.3%), which is clearly benefiting from its recent integration within the Social Network giant Facebook. The BBC’s music section (5.6%) appears at number 4 and Global Radio has a number of individual radio stations who feature with Heart (3%), Capital FM (2.4%) and Classic FM (1.8%).

Retailer Sites

Ebay (11.8%) and Amazon (11.3%) take the lead for the clothes, shoes and accessories retailer category. Whilst some of the high street shop’s online counterparts make up the rest of the top 10. The pure player Asos.com (8.1%) is ahead of these with department stores Next.co.uk (7.5%) and Marksandspencer.com (6.2%) also proving popular.

Cultural Sites

The cultural retailers’ category shows Amazon.co.uk as the clear favourite with over 60% of the total votes. Multi‐specialists Play.com (7.4%) and Ebay.co.uk (6%) are popular whilst there are also places for more specialised product retailers such as iTunes (2.9%), Ticketmaster.co.uk (2.4%), Lovefilm.com (1.2%) orSpotify.com (1%). High street shops such as Waterstones.co.uk (3.3%) and HMV.com (2.9%) also make an appearance in the Top 5.

Multimedia Sites

The multimedia retailers’ category is once again dominated by Amazon.co.uk gathering 43.2% of the votes. As for cultural products, main competition is provided by EBay.co.uk (12.4%) and Play.com (8.5%). The rest are the major UK electrical high street retailers such as Argos.co.uk (5.1%) and John Lewis (3.2%). Dixons Retail Group features twice with Currys.co.uk (2.6%) and PCWorld.co.uk (2.1%). Apple (1.8%) also makes an appearance; the only one to sell a specific brand.

Travel & Tourism Sites

The clear favourite for the travel and tourism category is Tripadvisor.co.uk (18%), which allows users to leave their own comments and reviews about products. Expedia.co.uk (7%) and Lastminute.com (6.8%) prove popular while price comparison website Travelsupermarket.com also features.