Christmas Day and Boxing Day expected to pull in over 300m retail site visits

Experian and IMRG has also predicted that there will be 142 million website visits to retailers on Christmas Day, while Boxing Day is thought to bring in 167 million visits – up 25 per cent and 29 per cent from 2013, respectively.

Giles Longhurst, general manager for consumer insight at Experian Marketing Services commented: “This year has seen record breaking online shopping rates, particularly on Black Friday, which saw an astronomical £810 million in estimated spend due to the massive resources put behind promotions by a wide range of retailers. Traditionally, the Boxing Day sales have been the busiest day for retailers in the UK, but this year we expect them to come second to Black Friday.

“Retailers need to be increasingly switched on to the fact that shopping is changing. Firstly, consumers are happy to leave online shopping later in the festive season, with a growth of 24 per cent to 149 million visits to retail sites on Manic Monday – the 8 December – and also a big 38 per cent jump on 15 December to 146m visits as they push pre-Christmas delivery services to the limit. Secondly, online shopping is now a leisure activity for customers, with many enjoying browsing and hunting for deals when they have a few minutes. This is where the importance of accurate cross-channel communications can really come in to play, letting customers know about promotions and offers and really cutting through the noise to drive interest and traffic.”

Insights are taken from the combined datasets of Hitwise, Experian`s online competitive intelligence tool, and the IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index using historical data and trends to make estimated predictions for 2014.