Consumers thinking of making purchases offline still conduct a great deal of research on the internet before buying products.

This is the opinion of Chris Lake, editor in chief of E-consultancy.com, who says that retailers who fail to have each "piece of the jigsaw" may end up losing out.

He commented: "The internet now plays a huge role in how consumers perform research before making purchases offline."

Currently, 56 per cent of all households in the UK who have access to the web use a broadband connection, a figure which is up five per cent on the statistics for 2007.

Overall 16 million homes can go online, which correlates to 65 per cent of the country.

According to websiteoftheyear.co.uk, the best websites belong to RBS.co.uk, Sky.com and Ents24.com, which won the most popular entertainment site.

Liverpool Football Club won the gong for the best sports site while Autotrader's website was decided to be the most impressive automotive page.

E-consultancy.com: Internet plays "huge role in how consumers perform research before making purchases offline."


Thursday, 28th August 2008

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