Perhaps as a sign of the times, the second and third fastest growing sectors were food and cooking, which saw a 56 percent increase in unique UK visitors, and coupons and rewards, up 55 percent.  Promotions offering discounts on holidays boosted traffic to Ribena’s site, from 12,000 unique UK visitors in July 2008 to almost 950,000 in July 2009.  Coupons and rewards web sites saw 10.9 million visitors in July 2009, up from 7 million a year ago.  The ability to earn reward points or getting discount vouchers towards purchases drove traffic to sites such as Nectar and MyVoucherCodes.co.uk.

“Although saving money is a major theme across the fastest growing online sectors, the variety of sectors – from mobile phones to food and cooking, from automotive and health to technology and parenting – shows the diminishing areas of daily life that aren’t being significantly enhanced or touched by the Internet.  Strong growth online isn’t just about social media,” said Alex Burmaster, Communications Director at Nielsen’s Online Division in the UK.

Read the full press release.

For our March 11 webinar, “Retail Recession Realities,” I’ll be recommending coping strategies for retailers dealing with the ongoing economic crisis. The news has gone from bad to worse in the past six months, but there are approaches retailers can take to survive the lean times and even come out ahead when (dare I say it?) the economy recovers.

The Web offers opportunities for growth like no other channel. Quick case in point – readership of traditional offline newspapers has declined significantly of late, and with it, the consumption of newspaper circulars. Meanwhile, visitors to online coupon sites increased 42 percent from December 2007 to December 2008. And while an increase in visitors usually leads to a decrease in average time per person, in this case time spent is also up by 28 percent year-over-year, indicating that visitors are more thoroughly engaged.

Learn more and register for the webinar at Nielsen Online.