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Amazon takes first and second place in UK online satisfaction survey

The online retailer has been voted the best on the web by the UK public for the second year running while Ryanair was voted worst.

Despite the online retailer's recent bad publicity regarding its British tax affairs, Amazon.co.uk is the best online destination for shopping, according to the annual ForSee survey of 10,000 UK shoppers.

It came top of the satisfaction survey based on price, customer cars, range of products, ease of use and quality of customer service. The second most popular online retailer was Amazon.com, the retailer's US counterpart, while Johnlewis.com, play.com and Apple.com rounded out the top five. At the other end of the scale, budget airline Ryanair came bottom again and was the only site in the list to have suffered a drop in satisfaction of three whole points. The site was criticized by users for its poor functionality, travel options and choice of flights.

According to the latest figures from Ofcom's global report the UK is now the world leader in online shopping. It was the first country to pass an average of £1000 spent per person per year online and the per-head spending on e-commerce is currently £1,083 ($1747) in the UK. Australia spends the second highest at £842 ($1358), with Sweden third at £747 ($1205). What's more, Internet Retailer Magazine claims the British public is expected to turn to the internet for 57 percent of its Christmas shopping this year.

Yet despite the massive growth in online sales, by and large customer satisfaction with the online shopping experience is not growing at the same rate, with aggregate satisfaction rates increasing by one percentage point a year since ForSee began running its annual survey in 2007.

However, satisfaction is key to building market share. According to the report's figures, a satisfied online customer is 61 percent more likely to remain committed to a brand, 58 percent more likely to make a repeat purchase and is 67 percent more likely to recommend the retailer to a friend. And, at the moment, Amazon's blend of extreme choice and simplicity of navigation is setting the standard for others to follow. As ForSee highlight in the report: "Virtually every retail shopper in the UK is visiting an Amazon site, and their expectations are being set accordingly."