Online retail sales on the up

Good news shines through the dot-com gloom

Online retail sales in September rose six per cent on August's levels. According to the Interactive Media Retail Group, e-tail was worth £366m in the UK last month - a massive 149 per cent up on September 2000. Other recent figures from the Office for National Statistics show that almost £60bn worth of UK sales were made over the internet in 2000, two per cent of the UK's entire sales output. But only 600 UK businesses conducted more than 50 per cent of their trading online in 2000. According to another recent report, the DTI's UK Online for Business International Benchmarking Study 2001, Britain and Sweden have the highest proportion of businesses connected to the internet. The number of UK businesses trading online increased by 20 per cent year on year, from 450,000 to 540,000. In order to meet the UK government's target of one million businesses trading online by 2002, that figure must increase by half a million within the next year. silicon.com has joined the ecommerce brigade: click on http://www.silicon-shop.com for everything from staplers to servers...