British internet users made 129m visits to retail websites on Boxing Day 2013, a 15 per cent year-on-year increase, making 26 December the biggest online shopping day ever, according to information and analyst firm Experian.
In total the UK spent 17m hours browsing and shopping online on Boxing Day 2013. UK shoppers spent 44.3m hours shopping online across Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day.
James Murray, Digital Insight Manager for Experian Marketing Services said 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, he said. “More importantly, Boxing Day is perhaps the biggest sales day of the year – with keen shoppers looking for the best bargains available. What we‘ve seen this year is that shoppers were planning their Boxing Day bargain hunting on Christmas Day as 1 in every 88 searches made in the UK on Christmas Day included the word ‘sale‘ or ‘sales‘.”
The findings found:
Ӣ There were 90m online retail visits on Christmas Eve 2013 (up 6 per cent y-o-y) and 114m online retail visits on Christmas Day (up 6 per cent y-o-y)
Ӣ Boxing Day 2013 was the biggest day ever online shopping day (again) for the sixth year in a row
Ӣ Boxing Day 2013 was 8 per cent bigger than Middle Cyber Monday (9 December 2013) which was the previous record holder for online shopping visits
The Christmas shopping period is said to be worth £890m to online retailers with Boxing Day sales surpassing £540m, according to the IMRG Quarterly Benchmarking Index.
