IMRG, the Interactive Media in Retail Group, reported that Monday 1st December recorded the UK’s largest ever online shopping volumes, but the anticipated VAT-driven spike failed to materialize, leaving sales values and traffic volumes flat. Retail trading patterns – both online and offline – are changing considerably this year, as new, fast-paced multi-channel strategies emerge, and retailers instantly react to competitor’s tactics. For example, last Thursday, many retailers piled into ‘20% Off Day’, creating a huge spike of traffic and trade on the high street and on websites.
James Roper, CEO at IMRG, says: “Monday is almost always the biggest shopping day of the week, and Monday’s in December are usually huge. It was widely assumed that yesterday’s fall in VAT, from 17.5% to 15%, would create a considerable shopping surge, due pent up demand caused by shoppers waiting for the lower rate. But it just didn’t happen. Many of the smart e-retailers had already passed on the lower rate as soon as it was announced.”
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Jon Prideaux, deputy chief executive of payments service provider SecureTrading, comments: “Yesterday was the largest day for UK e-commerce ever in terms of transactions, but value was flat. Transaction volumes were 3% higher than the 2007 record but value is almost exactly the same as last year. The size of the general Christmas peak is smaller: normally it’s 85% above an average day, this year it’s only 68%.”
Chris Russell, a director of eDigitalResearch which monitors visitor traffic to major e-retail sites, adds: “We saw the same trend with regard to the number of consumers visiting online shopping sites – it was not the year’s traffic peak. Yesterday’s traffic was just 32% higher than the average October day, compared to a rise of 45% for the first Monday (3rd) of December 2007, and 83% on Monday 4th December 2006. This year may be very different; we expect that if there is a continuation of the strong promotional activity that we saw last week by high street retailers, both in store and online, there may be a significant change in the overall pattern of online traffic for 2008.”
Image: IMRG logo