Celebrating the 20th Anniversary of the first ever online sale
The first online sale may not be something to celebrate about, but the primitive system behind that transaction and the evolution of the internet, is something we can all agree requires some form of celebration.
Monday marked the twentieth anniversary of the first securely sold item on the web.
In 1994, on 11th August, Sting’s album “Ten Summoner’s Tales” was purchased on NetMarket for $12.48, including extra shipping charges.
Since then eCommerce has revolutionised the way we shop, how and when, with 95% of Brits now choosing to buy online.
Two decades on since the first online item was sold, nearly one in four people in the UK decide to shop online, at least once a week.
In the previous year, over £91 billion was spent online and that figure is expected to exceed £100 billion this year.
The increasing number of people using their tablets and phones has also played a big part, with one in five of the 1000 recently surveyed saying they’ve used their device to shop and one in ten using a smartphone.
The popularity of the online retail is such that it’s inserted itself into people’s daily routines. More than 25% of people have said they shop online in bed, while one in twenty have said virtual window shopping is now involved in their morning commute.
Senior lecturer at The Open University Business School in retail management, Fiona Ellis Chadwick, says: ‘The early days of online shopping were very basic and the customer experience wasn’t fantastic. Few Brits had a computer and those that did had very slow internet access, which would take a long time to load an image let alone order a product.
The customer experience has drastically changed since 1994. In the early days of online shopping, we would go to the high street and look through various shops and choose from what was on offer.
Now that the whole online shopping industry has come alive, we can save time and money by undertaking the research from the comfort of our own homes and ordering for a time that suits us.’
With online-only sites including ASOS and Amazon UK being in the top ten mobile sites, and Amazon UK also on the internet, it isn’t a wonder why the phenomenon that is online shopping is thriving and on the rise.
Are you included in the 95%? What do you think about online shopping?
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