The Office for National Statistics has reported that female consumers in the UK are both more likely to have used safe shopping online in the past year, and also are bigger spenders when they do use the web.

In 2014, just 50 per cent of men said that they had harnessed an e-commerce service to make an online purchase, while this was true of 64 per cent of women.

In total, the average weekly spend in the UK hit £718.7 million last year, with women accounting for £460 million of this total. Analysts said that the reason for this gender divide is that female consumers have more interest in using the internet because of the sheer breadth of the selection of products that are on offer.

Women are also attracted to e-commerce sites because they give them lots of different delivery options to select, rather than forcing them to get their goods in one specific manner.

Men may spend more money than women on consumer electronic products and sports equipment, but females outpace males in many other areas in terms of spending, such as fashion and clothing items.

Twenty seven per cent of the men questioned in the latest ONS study said that they have never actually made a purchase via safe shopping online. For women, this figure is 19 per cent, showing that the internet has proven to be a much more appealing place to shop for females in the UK.

This difference in shopping habits based on gender is no doubt something that retailers will be looking into, as they formulate their strategies going forward. Retaining the large number of female customers while encouraging more men to shop online, will be the balancing act that these companies attempt to perform over the coming months and years.