More United Kigndom IP Communications Stories

Though it was a slow and painful holiday for many retailers navigating this recession, many of those who hawk their wares online appear to have fared well on Christmas Day, thanks in large part to U.K. residents.

 

A London-based e-retail industry community, the Interactive Media in Retail Group, or “IMRG,” is reporting today that Britons spent the equivalent of about $154 million on Dec. 25 – a 21 percent jump from the prior year.

 

Some retailers had bad experiences with the recession, of course, but overall trade was larger, later and longer than in 2007.

 

According to James Roper, chief executive officer at IMRG, Christmas Day itself is now a favorite online shopping day with consumers and retailers alike.

 

“Though the number of people shopping on Christmas Day was 14 percent lower than in 2007, the volume of transactions was 26 percent higher, and the value rose by 21 percent, indicating that serious bargain hunting was the order of the day,” Roper said.

 

IMRG reports that traffic to retail Web sites during the run-up to Christmas 2008 was higher than the 2007 level, but transaction volumes rose even more sharply – up 9 percent in November and 28 percent in December, according to Secure Trading.

 

“Ticket values were down, however, indicating that more people were buying but lower value items,” the group says.

 

IMRG’s figures measure up well with predictions from an online retailers’ trade association based here in the United States, land of the vanquished red coats.

 

As TMCnet reported, most U.S. e-retailers said they expect sales to increase at least 15 percent over last year, according to a new survey from a Washington, D.C.-based trade association.

 

According to the so-called “2008 eHoliday study” from Shop.org, a division of the National Retail Federation, about 56 percent of e-retailers were eyeing the 15-plus percent increase – though that number was down from 78 percent in 2007.

 

Scott Silverman, Shop.org’s executive director, said that online retailers are “resilient, but not immune” to the difficult holiday that this slower economy has wrought.

 

“Retailers will be heavily promotional to attract shoppers on a budget, but have also invested in new site features to improve the online buying experience,” Silverman said.

 

People also are more comfortable spending money online, IMRG reports.

 

According to Jon Prideaux, of the payments company SecureTrading, November normally is the industry’s biggest month – but this year Christmas sales came later.

 

“This year we saw a 15 percent rise,” Prideaux said. “In the week of Christmas itself, people went crazy with an increase of a 91 percent in the number of transactions processed – values were up by three quarters. But the recession is still a factor with transaction values are steadily dropping throughout the year.”