Online fashion retailers Next and Matalan were among the notable climbers in the latest chart of the UK’s top online shops.

Next overtook Tesco to become the UK’s third most visited retail website, according the latest IMRG Experian Hitwise Hot Shops list.

The August 2011 listing showed that Amazon UK and Argos retained the two spots in the listing but that Next put Tesco into fourth place, ahead of fifth-placed Amazon.com and Play.com, ay sixth. Robin Goad, director of research at Experian Hitwise, said Next had “never been so dominant in online fashion,” with one in every 11 visits in July to its website.

He said Matalan, which was the fastest climber of the list rising 15 places to 48 and reaching the top 50 for the first time, “Matalan has quadrupled visits to its website in the last three years and has seen record levels of traffic in the last month – so much so that it received 44% more visits in July than December, traditionally the biggest month of the year for online retailers.”

The Hot Shops listings showed a creditable performance for travel retailers, with Thomson moving up to tenth place, followed by easyJet. Expedia and Ryanair were both climbers, at 14 and 15 respectively, while The Train Line also rose to 21 in the list.

Tina Spooner, chief information officer at IMRG, said: “Amazon UK and Argos have been heading the list for a while now, but competition seems to be arriving from Next who have made great gains over the past year from 8th to 3rd in the space of just 15 months. During the summer months the travel companies always perform well, although growth for some of them was more modest than last year. Two of them, however, The Train Line and TravelRepublic.co.uk, have exceeded the rankings they achieved in summer last year.”

IMRG Experian Hitwise Hot Shops top ten

Amazon UK
Argos
Next
Tesco
Amazon.com
Play.com
Your M&S
Apple
John Lewis
Thomson

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