UK To See Unparalled Interest In Online Shopping This Christmas

UK retailers are expected to register 115 million visits to their websites on 3 December, the so-called ‘Cyber Monday’, which suggests that this year’s Christmas season will see its highest levels of online trade in history, according to Experian Hitwise data.

As I read in a report from the information services specialist, the number of people turning to e-commerce websites on this day will be 36% higher compared with last year. Consumers are seen to spend an aggregate of 15 million hours buying products on the Internet, or a total of 375 million hours throughout the whole of December, which translates into an annual 9% increase.

Overall, 2011 was a huge success for brands in the industry, which enjoyed an unprecedented 2.18 billion visits, of which 96.2 million were made on Boxing Day alone, the UK’s busiest day for e-commerce last year. According to James Murray, digital insight manager at Experian Marketing Services, Christmas 2012 will beat all of last year’s records.

In 2011, Cyber Monday fell on 5 December when e-commerce websites recorded 84.6 million visits, with Amazon and eBay accounting for 28% of the total. As 2012 is a leap year and Cyber Monday will be two days earlier, the experts predict that the second and third Mondays of December will fare considerably better than in 2011. The intercalary year will also benefit from sales on Christmas Eve, which is traditionally one of the most disappointing days for e-commerce brands but this year falls on a Monday.