IT MIGHT be five years since the dot-com bubble burst but new figures show Britain’s online shoppers were spending £150 million every day in the run-up to Christmas. There is strong evidence that the internet has started to have a dramatic impact on UK shopping habits with customers the beneficiaries, at least in the short term, as prices are driven down.

Internet retailers did spectacularly well over the Christmas shopping season, according to a survey from the pollster YouGov. An online study of 4,500 people found that 34 per cent of Christmas shopping was done via the net, with a quarter of those polled saying they had spent much more online last year than in 2004.

Amazon did best of all in the UK coming in with the second highest share of the electronics sector behind Argos, as well as taking nearly 25 per cent of the money spent by respondents on media and home entertainment, such as books and DVDs.

The online boom seems to have been at the expense of large stores such as Dixons, Currys and PC World, with respondents reporting spending less in stores in the electrical goods sector, the exception being plasma or LCD televisions.

The YouGov data comes with a health warning. Its sample is entirely online and with internet penetration estimated at 50 to 65 per cent, the pollster says on the specific issue of online behaviour it cannot safely make assumptions about the nation as a whole. It recommends the figures be halved, putting its estimate for the level of internet Christmas shopping still at a record 17 per cent.

The online retail sector accounted for 15 per cent of internet visits in the UK in the first week of December, according to Hitwise, an internet analyst.

During that period eBay was the UK’s most visited retail website, accounting for nearly 6 per cent of all online visits and one third of visits to online shopping sites, driven by searches for Sony’s PSP games console and Microsoft’s Xbox 360.

But perception of the quality of the online auction site plummeted during the Christmas period, according to the YouGov BrandIndex survey, which has quizzed more than 50,000 online shoppers since October.

One reason is the growing number of scams on the eBay site. According to Microsoft, more than 21,000 suspect software sales were removed from the UK eBay site between August and October.