Next, the most visited online fashion retailer in Christmas

Next with a share of 2.17% was the most visited UK fashion online retailer, followed by John Lewis (1.86% visits), M&S with 1.66% online visitors, Debenhmas (1.59%), and ASOS, with 1.18% of the total online visits to retail sites on Christmas Day.

John Lewis surpassed mobile shopping expectations.

Christmas Day 2011 was a landmark for shopping online as 62.8 million UK Internet visits went to online retail websites. 1 in every 8 visits online in the UK on 25th December went to a retail website, a new record for Christmas Day shopping online, comments James Murray, Marketing and Research Analyst, Experian Hitwise UK, in his last post.

"We’ve already seen new records set for Cyber Monday this year, and although the Christmas Day figures are not nearly as high as those for Cyber Monday, 25 December is certainly emerging as an important online shopping day in its own right. On Christmas Eve there were 45.5 million visits to online retailers, whereas Christmas Day saw 62.8 million – a 38% increase in a single day."

Traditionally, Boxing Day has always been the biggest online retail day of the year, and we’re still expecting that to be the case this year, with 95 million UK Internet visits predicted to go to retail websites on 26 December. However, in the last two years, Christmas Day has become more significant as a shopping day. Last year 11% of all UK Internet visits on Christmas Day went to a retail website, whereas this year 12.2% of all visits went to retailers. You can see from the chart below the key categories which have seen an increase in visits year-on-year, including Entertainment, Search Engines and Shopping.

In the same vein, mobile shopping experienced a huge hit thanks to the new bar code readers. For example, mobile traffic to the John Lewis online clearance sale has soared 119% on last year's levels and the amount of cash spent online from mobile phones was up 46% since the sale began at 5pm on Christmas Eve, reported The Guardian.

"Mobile has reached a scale now where all retailers have to take it seriously," said to the journal Jonathon Brown, head of online selling for John Lewis. "Customers' behaviours have changed. The transaction volume we've had in the last few days has surprised all of us."