December sees UK's largest online shopping volume

IMRG, the Interactive Media in Retail Group, reported that Monday 1st December recorded the UK’s largest ever online shopping volumes, but the anticipated VAT-driven spike failed to materialize, leaving sales values and traffic volumes flat. Retail trading patterns – both online and offline – are changing considerably this year, as new, fast-paced multi-channel strategies emerge, and retailers instantly react to competitor’s tactics. For example, last Thursday, many retailers piled into ‘20% Off Day’, creating a huge spike of traffic and trade on the high street and on websites.

James Roper, CEO at IMRG, says: “Monday is almost always the biggest shopping day of the week, and Monday’s in December are usually huge. It was widely assumed that yesterday’s fall in VAT, from 17.5% to 15%, would create a considerable shopping surge, due pent up demand caused by shoppers waiting for the lower rate. But it just didn’t happen. Many of the smart e-retailers had already passed on the lower rate as soon as it was announced.”

Jon Prideaux, deputy chief executive of payments service provider SecureTrading, comments: “Yesterday was the largest day for UK e-commerce ever in terms of transactions, but value was flat. Transaction volumes were 3% higher than the 2007 record but value is almost exactly the same as last year. The size of the general Christmas peak is smaller: normally it’s 85% above an average day, this year it’s only 68%.”

Chris Russell, a director of eDigitalResearch which monitors visitor traffic to major e-retail sites, adds: “We saw the same trend with regard to the number of consumers visiting online shopping sites – it was not the year’s traffic peak. Yesterday’s traffic was just 32% higher than the average October day, compared to a rise of 45% for the first Monday (3rd) of December 2007, and 83% on Monday 4th December 2006. This year may be very different; we expect that if there is a continuation of the strong promotional activity that we saw last week by high street retailers, both in store and online, there may be a significant change in the overall pattern of online traffic for 2008.”

Image: IMRG logo