Cyber Monday is set to be the UK‘s biggest ever online shopping day with more than 100 million online visits expected, according to data released today.
Monday December 3rd 2012 will see UK consumers spend 15 million hours shopping online while throughout the month, time spend making e-commerce purchases will reach 375 million hours, a nine per cent increase on 2011.
Data analyst group Experian predicts that this year will be the biggest ever Christmas within the digital space and Cyber Monday will see Britain make 115 million visits to retail websites, up a significant 36 per cent on last year.
James Murray, Digital Insight Manager at Experian Marketing Services said of the findings: “Christmas 2012 is on track to be another record-breaker for online retail, outstripping 2011 on all fronts.
“The current market trends suggest that in the UK, Monday 3rd December will be the biggest pre-Christmas day for online retail, with an estimated 115 million visits to online retail outlets and a massive 15 million hours spent online shopping on this day alone.”
In 2011, UK consumers made 21.8 billion visits to retail websites and spent 343 million hours looking for products online while last year‘s Cyber Monday reported 84.6 million retail site visits, 28 per cent of which were visits to pure-play e-tailers Amazon and eBay.
As a result of the leap year, Cyber Monday will fall earlier than in the past and as such Experian predicts that the second and third Mondays of next month will “perform significantly ahead of last year”.
Significantly, Christmas Eve also falls on a Monday this year and is expected to see online sales rise thanks to click & collect offers and last-minute deliveries.
Falling one week after mega Monday in the US which follows the Thanksgiving weekend on Nocvember 26th, Cyber Monday is forecast to precipitate a “sales creep”, as shoppers search for sales from December 15th onwards.
Murray highlighted the significant opportunity that the expected sales surge presents to retailers, commenting: “This will be the peak of pre-Christmas shopping in the UK so marketers need to make sure their campaigns are in place to maximise traffic on Cyber Monday: it‘s not too late to promote special offers through email and social media.
“Understanding what people are interested in, the best channels to engage customers through and when to reach them will be crucial to success this Christmas.”
