Online sales in the UK will exceed physical store sales by 2026

USwitch reports that while physical retail stores have experienced reduced sales because of the depressed economic conditions, internet sales results continue to increase and will be more than 50% of all retails sales by 2026.

Physical retail stores had a 3.9% reduction in sales in June, which is the greatest monthly reduction since 1986.

USwitch says online sales will increase to £163 billion a year by 2020 - a 44% share of the total retail market.

The reduction in the cost of broadband access, the increase in internet speed, and high petrol prices, mean that UK consumers now spend 1.6 hours a week shopping online.

15 million UK households now have broadband connections, and UK online sales in 2007 were 40% higher than Germany, France, Italy and Spain.

This trend means that our UK Business Directory for Local Search is proving very popular. It has over 2.2 million pages indexed on Google and there is no cost for the 1.6 million businesses involved to be listed.