In the UK, 36% of Brits said they expected to spend more on their Christmas shopping on the web than they did last year, writes Nikki Sandison. Large retailers such as Sainsbury's and John Lewis have already optimised their sites, ready for the Christmas rush, concentrating on easy navigation and seamless checkout. Last year John Lewis' website took more sales than all of its high-street stores, apart from its flagship Oxford Street shop, and this year the store expects more of the same.
Bob Ivans, executive vice-president of international markets at ComScore, told Revolution: "The popularity of online shopping is set to reach an all time high this year, as time-squeezed consumers -- with high-speed internet access -- can be expected to spend more time shopping and buying Christmas gifts online."
Nintendo Wii was the most searched for product by UK internet shoppers during November, according to figures from Hitwise. The data showed that there have been 13 times more online searches for the Wii games console so far in the run up to Christmas than there have been for the Apple iPod. The publicity surrounding real and fake discount shopping vouchers helped the word "vouchers" to become one of the top 10 fastest growing search terms sending traffic to retail websites. Thresher Group saw traffic to its website increase by 240% in the week ending November 24 as its 40%-off Christmas voucher spread across the internet. Selfridges also benefited with its email traffic tripling for the week ending December 1 due to its 20% off voucher.
Online retail spending hit a record $733m (£356m) in the US on "Cyber Monday", the Monday after Thanksgiving which usually represents the first significant spike in online holiday spending. The spend figure increased by 21% on last year and was an 84% jump from the average daily online spending totals during the preceding four weeks, according to ComScore.
December 2 is expected to be the busiest day for online shopping in the UK, according to research by Forrester. Research conducted on eBay.co.uk found that almost a quarter -- or 23% -- of users shop online to track down original or hard to find presents, while 67% choose internet shopping for the convenience factor. Over half -- or 51% -- shop online because it's cheaper.