The online retail sector is beginning to feel the effects of the recession, a new report has concluded.

According to Hitwise, e-commerce sites represented 8.6 per cent of all visits to websites in the UK last month, down from 9.7 per cent in March last year.

This decrease is particularly notable considering the fact that visits to social networking sites, online news providers and entertainment websites have increased over the last 12 months, said Robin Goad, research director at Hitwise.

Social network visits accounted for 9.8 per cent of all web visits in March, up from 8.2 per cent last year.

News websites' share of visits rose from five per cent to 5.6 per cent, while entertainment sites saw 11.6 per cent of traffic last month compared with 11.4 per cent one year previously.

"The growth of social networking, online video and the continuing popularity of news websites has meant that an increasing proportion of consumers' online time in the UK has been devoted to online media," Mr Goad commented.

Earlier this year, Forrester Research released a forecast suggesting that UK e-commerce spending is likely to reach £56 billion by 2014, rising at a rate of six per cent per annum on average.
 

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