Web sites related to mobile phones - both handsets and services - showed the highest traffic growth in the UK, according to new research from The Nielsen Company.  Overall, the sector posted 58 percent growth on a year-to-year basis.  Visits to Nokia's site grew by 203 percent, while Vodafone and O2 also posted solid growth (91% and 79%, respectively).  At the same time, schemes that enable consumers to recycle their old mobiles for cash drove more people to related web sites for information. 

Perhaps as a sign of the times, the second and third fastest growing sectors were food and cooking, which saw a 56 percent increase in unique UK visitors, and coupons and rewards, up 55 percent.  Promotions offering discounts on holidays boosted traffic to Ribena's site, from 12,000 unique UK visitors in July 2008 to almost 950,000 in July 2009.  Coupons and rewards web sites saw 10.9 million visitors in July 2009, up from 7 million a year ago.  The ability to earn reward points or getting discount vouchers towards purchases drove traffic to sites such as Nectar and MyVoucherCodes.co.uk.

"Although saving money is a major theme across the fastest growing online sectors, the variety of sectors - from mobile phones to food and cooking, from automotive and health to technology and parenting - shows the diminishing areas of daily life that aren't being significantly enhanced or touched by the Internet.  Strong growth online isn't just about social media," said Alex Burmaster, Communications Director at Nielsen's Online Division in the UK.

Read the full press release.