Busiest online shopping day ever; today 9th of December

Cyber Monday, busiest Online Shopping Day in the UK

According to ecommerce and Internet analysts, the busiest day in the history of online shopping will be about lunchtime today, Monday the 9th of December 2009 when millions of online shoppers are expected to log on to their computers, surf to their favourite online retailers to buy items for their loved ones Christmas stockings. It is estimated that collectively, online shoppers in the UK will spend about £4,000 per second.

The organisation behind the statistics, IMRG, which is a consortium of online retailers said today is significant in Christmas shopping because the first Monday in December is when most employers have paid their staff, the staff in turn have money to spend and some people try to get their Christmas shopping out of the way in time and also place orders on time to give online retailers to get products delivered before Christmas. Approximately £340 Million will be spend on shopping for gift tomorrow, if the forecast is accurate, this means an increase of 10% over 2008. A great chunk of the spending is expected to be made on consumer electronic, DVDs and Music CDS. Some of the items that tops shoppers Christmas shopping list this year includes iPhones, Susan Boyles Album and Harry Potter Half-Blood Prince DVD.

Most of the orders are expected to be placed between 9-10AM and at lunchtime when office workers spend their lunch break ordering presents online. Leading companies such as M&S are expecting significant traffic to their website and call centres, Marks and Spencer are expecting about 3.5 million hits, John Lewis is expecting to take £4.5 million on Monday the 9th of December which is expected to be the busiest online shopping day in 2009. The high street on the other hand is expected to remain busy right until the last shopping day before Christmas.

Online Shopping Spend in decline

The amount of money spent online in the US is down, just like high street retailers are felling the pinch of the credit crunch according to US Internet statistics firm, ComScore. Spending online has grow steadily over the last eight years since ComScore began measuring online sales, November 2008, shoppers spent £5.3 Billion, that is 4% less than what shoppers spent online same time last year. ComScore forecasted for the rest of the Christmas sale period is not encouraging either, it sees a flat or even negative growth. Last year, US online retailers enjoyed a 19% rise in sales.

ComScore forecast does not necessarily mean the same fate for UK and European retailers. Manager of Online golf equipment retailer Planet Golf UK, Stuart Tree said sales are up by about 11% in November when compared with November 2007, BBC quoted Bruce Fair, managing director of Kelkoo “We dispute the notion that online shopping in a downturn, in the UK and Europe at least, as there is much evidence that shows its is replacing the high street as a primary shopping location,” .

A few months ago, the forecast that UK ecommerce will grow by at least 15%.

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