Internet penetration in the U.K. rose to 25% in May 2000, according to the latest study from Forrester. This is up from 21% from May 1999. The increase takes the total number of people in the U.K.
with Internet access to 19 million, Forrester said. "Whilst access at work was an early driver to growth, home use now accounts for 74% of web use in the U.K.," said William Reeve, group director of
European Data Products at Forrester. Subscription-free Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are also driving Internet use, and their profile is visible in web users' behavior, he added. "For
instance, 56% of users now see their ISP's chosen homepage when they first go online, up from 47% in November 1999, 38% in May 1999 and 24% in December 1998," Reeve said. The web is impacting
British buying behavior too, with 89% of users polled having investigated some kind of goods and services online, the group said. Half of British users have looked into CDs, music, videos and DVDs
online, but still relatively few (38%) have actually bought anything online, the survey found. The most common items bought are books--by 44% of UK online shoppers. Yahoo! and Freeserve are the most
popular two sites, the Forrester survey found, with Yahoo! used by over half of U.K. users over a typical two-week period.
