Boxing Day breaks online retail records

British shoppers made 129 million visits to retail websites on Boxing Day setting a new retail record for the sixth year in a row. Figures released by global information services company Experian show that visit figures were up by 15 percent

compared to December 26 last year, making it the biggest online shopping day ever.

The increase has been credited with consumers hunting for the best bargains around, with the report stating that the UK spent 17 million hours browsing and shopping online on December 26, adding that shopping activity accounted for 17 percent of all online visits on Boxing Day, which means that one in every six visits online went to a retail website.

Retail records have already been broken five times this festive season, which was kick-started on Black Friday, November 29 after the American Thanksgiving holiday. Middle Cyber Monday, December 9, held the previous record with 120 million visits in a single day, but that was topped on Boxing Day with 129 million visits, making it 8 percent bigger than any day in UK retail history online.

Experian notes that Boxing Day has consistently been the biggest online shopping day of the year since 2008, but with consumer trends changing and people spreading their shopping across December, Boxing Day 2013 faced a “stiff challenge” to outperform December 9, 2013.

James Murray, digital insight manager for Experian Marketing Services, said: “Online retail records have been broken again for the fourth time this December with an astonishing Boxing Day performance. The figure of 129 million retail visits is 8 percent bigger than any other online retail day in history.

“A number of factors have contributed to this performance. Boxing Day has always been a key shopping day for consumers to spend money and vouchers received on Christmas Day and to organise for returns or exchanges of unwanted gifts. More importantly, Boxing Day is perhaps the biggest sales day of the year – with keen shoppers looking for the best bargains available.”

The report also showed that online visits were also up on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, with 90 million online retail visits on December 24, up 6 percent year-on-year, while December 25 attracted 114 million online retail visits.

Murray, added: “What we’ve seen this year is that shoppers were planning their Boxing Day bargain hunting on Christmas Day as one in every 88 searches made in the UK on Christmas Day included the word ‘sale’ or ‘sales’.

“Christmas Day itself, although not as big as Boxing Day, has once again seen significant growth in online retail visits, highlighting that 25 December is becoming an important online shopping day in its own right.”

Sales increase via mobile devices on Boxing Day

Experian’s research was backed up by findings from IBM in its Digital Analytics Benchmark report that revealed that online sales increased by 40.4 percent on Boxing Day, compared to 2012, and that sales via mobile devices grew by 64 percent year-on-year, and exceeded 45 percent of total online sales.

The IBM report also showed that while tablets drove almost a third of online sales on Boxing Day, that it was smartphones that drove browsing, with smartphones accounting for 29.9 percent of all online traffic versus tablets at 28 percent. However, when it came to making purchases, tablet users contributed to 29.4 percent of online sales, nearly twice that of smartphones users. The average order value (AOV) on tablets being 83.55 pounds, while AOV on all mobile phones was 78.06 pounds.

James Lovell, smarter commerce retail solutions consultant, Europe, IBM said: “This is the first time that traffic on mobile devices has outstripped the PC. Mobile has rapidly become the dominant channel and now retailers really need to look at the role that each device is going to play within the overall customer journey and decision making process.

“The key challenge will be how they maximise the effectiveness of these devices to help augment the in-store customer experience as well as the traditional digital only channels.”