Almost half of visitors to the Ebookers website are aged 50 or over and two out of five users to Ryanair are in the forty-something bracket, figures released this week have revealed. A Nielsen//NetRatings study of web traffic in January indicated that some online brands are dominated by a particular age group. In the over-50s…
Survey reveals older demographic for Ebookers and Ryanair
Almost half of visitors to the Ebookers website are aged 50 or over and two out of five users to Ryanair are in the forty-something bracket, figures released this week have revealed.
A Nielsen//NetRatings study of web traffic in January indicated that some online brands are dominated by a particular age group.
In the over-50s category, 44% of users at Ebookers helped push the site into fourth place behind IncrediMail, uSwitch and OneTel as the most likely brands to be visited.
Other sites featured in the top ten included Information Britain, ViaMichelin, Telegraph.co.uk, Symantec, Epson and The Weather Channel.
Nielsen//NetRatings said the figures indicated a tendency for the over-50s to use the internet as an information tool.
European internet analyst Alex Burmaster, said: “This could take the form of comparing prices on electricity, phone and gas services through sites such as uSwitch – the latter particularly relevant with the recent concerns about the hike in gas prices.
“Or it could take the form of looking for information on travelling around the country or news and weather info. What’s clear is the over 50’s are using the web to find out about the world around them and how their lives can be made easier.
The same survey revealed 40% of Ryanair’s traffic was generated by users in the forties, placing the budget airline fifth behind Premium TV, Abbey, Genes Reunited and Demon, and ahead of Alliance & Leicester, NHS, Marks & Spencer, Ebuyer and Yell.
”The brands where you are most likely to find forty-somethings represent a wide variety of sectors from football to finance, travel to retail and family to health.
“This age group, therefore, represents one of the great attributes of the Internet in how it helps people meet all manner of needs they have in their daily lives more effectively.”
In other demographics, BSkyB, PayPal and Amazon were the highest in the twenty-something bracket and the thirty-something category was led by Barclays, Argos and Halifax.
The younger age groups – covering users in their twenties and thirties – are dominated by retail sites, Nielsen said.
