Online shopping falls for third week

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Internet stores had initially benefited from the economic crisis, as shoppers turned online to find the best prices but that has changed as spending stops altogether, new figures revealed today.

"This is a clear indication that the credit crunch is now hitting online," said Robin Goad of Hitwise, the internet monitoring company which carried out the research. "This could be just the beginning of a major downturn."

Today's figures, found an eight per cent drop in the number of visits to shopping sites across the UK over the last three weeks.

"This is something we just haven't seen before," said Mr Goad. "However, we think we will see a rise over Christmas, but January is going to be very interesting - particularly as earlier this year, the first week of January saw the biggest ever online sales."

Supermarket sites are bucking the trend, however, with traffic up 10 per cent year on year .