Online Christmas sales to reach 17.6bn
According to the latest figures, 4.4 million people bought goods online on Christmas Day 2007 and spent a total of £84 million, 269 per cent over last year, averaging at £19.09 per shopper. James Roper, CEO, IMRG, comments, “The only way we Brits can enjoy the nation’s favourite leisure activity – shopping – on Christmas Day, our biggest holiday of the year, is online. So it is hardly surprising that millions of us now do a spot of Yuletide bargain hunting. As you would expect, people flock to the online shops later in the day than usual on Christmas Day, generally, after the Queen’s Speech, with main action happening between 8 and 10pm, and the e-tills keep ringing right up till midnight. This is a great boon for shops and shop staff, who seem to work all hours in the run up to Christmas, as they finally can take a well-earned day off to be with friends and family.”
This new clear insight into actual online trading patterns by hour and day has become possible by combining sales data from SecureTrading, the UK’s leading independent payment services provider, which is tracking millions of transactions from 1,500 UK e-retailers, with traffic data from the leading digital market research firm, eDigitalResearch, using a sample of over 250 million page views per month from leading UK retailers that have its survey code installed on their web site.
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Chris Russell, Director, eDigital Research, believes this year’s web traffic will follow a similar pattern to last year, where a steep increase in traffic to online retail websites was recorded in the days after Christmas, with the pinnacle occurring on the 27 December.
Russell comments, “Generally, up to 20% of all high street sales are preceded by online research. In the Christmas sales we could see even more people turning to the internet before hitting the high street to get a head start and cut out some of the leg work.” Fast facts: Total Christmas e-retail sales (i.e. Q4 2007) are expected to reach £17.6 billion, an 82% increase of the £9.6 billion recorded for the same period in 2006.
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