SHOPPERS will spend £78 billion a year online by 2010 – doubling the web’s share of retail sales to 20%.

This year internet shopping is expected to reach £42 billion – equivalent to the turnover of supermarket giant Tesco, Britain’s biggest retailer.

Internet sales have exploded over the past six years, growing by 3,553% between April 2000 and December 2006. During that period the monthly value of UK e-retail sales rose from £87m to £3.6 billion. Internet sales were only £800m in 2000, the year of the dotcom boom. The first-ever online transaction was a CD sale in America in August 1994.

According to IMRG, the internet research group, the amount spent online by UK shoppers this year will be equivalent to the sales of nine London West Ends, Britain’s biggest shopping destination.

An estimated 860m parcels will be shipped to Britain’s 26m internet customers this year. They will receive an average of 33 each during the year. On average, online shoppers will splash out £1,600 each in 2007.

Online sales were worth £30.2 billion in 2006, up from £19.2 billion in 2005. Sales surpassed expectations in the run-up to Christmas last year when they soared to almost £1 billion during each of the first three weeks of December.

IMRG estimates that the global internet shopping marketplace will be worth £250 billion this year.

More than a billion people use the internet – equivalent to 17% of the world’s population. Almost a third of them live in Europe.

IMRG said that cross-border sales would grow sharply over the next few years, providing retailers with a big opportunity to expand their influence, product range and market reach.

IMRG said that many people are choosing to research new purchases online even if they don’t eventually buy over the web. Even for products such as garden furniture and clothing – which are not usually popular online – more customers are choosing to research on the web before going into stores or buying online.

It added that many customers in Britain assume that the majority of big-name stores have a website from which they can buy goods, but at the start of 2007 nearly half of the top 100 UK retailers did not have a website from which purchases could be made.

As more customers are choosing to go green, internet retailers are trying to pitch themselves as an eco-friendly alternative to travelling to high-street shops.

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