A new report has been released that contains evidence that online shopping is more popular in the UK than any other developed country in the world. It should make for interesting reading for all UK businesses as it shows a continued trend of people not only spending more money online, but doing so via a variety of devices.

Ofcom’s seventh International Communications Market Report found that on average UK consumers spend £1,083 per head, which is up 14% on 2010. Compared to other major world countries, the UK is ahead of Australia (£842) and Sweden (£747), who rank second and third respectively.

Of those who shop online in Britain, over 23% visit e-commerce sites via their smartphone. This contributes to UK shoppers using more devices more often than any other country. Predictably this also signals that UK consumers are downloading more mobile data than any other country, surprisingly even Japan lags behind.

The statistics have been taken further by Adam Stewart, Marketing Director at Play.com. He has studied the web traffic into Play.com and found very interesting trends. He states that they regularly see more people access the site via a mobile device between 6am – 8am. These browsers will include people commuting to work and surfing the web before getting up.

Nearly 16% of all online surfing across the UK is now done via a mobile device or tablet, which includes an iPhone, BlackBerry or iPad. So it is more important than ever for businesses to be aware of how people are accessing their website. The latest statistics show that a website visitor takes around 3.8 seconds to decided if they want to stay on a particular website.

James Tickett, Director of Research at Ofcom commented: “Our research reveals that the UK leads the way in using the internet on the move. Increasingly, it’s mobile devices like smartphones and tablets that are driving this growing demand for data.”