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Hitwise Intelligence - Robin Goad - UK
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Boxing Day busiest online shopping day in the UK during 2007
December 28, 2007
Today we put out a press release announcing that Boxing Day (26th December) was the busiest day for online shopping in the UK over the holiday period, and therefore the whole of 2007. In order to compare this year to previous years we created an index of UK internet visits to our Shopping and Classifieds category, using 1st November each year as the base (illustrated in the chart below).
As you can see, not only was Boxing Day the busiest day this year, but it was busier this year than in both 2005 and 2006. Indeed, the importance of the day after Christmas has been increasing steadily over the last two years. Another interesting thing about this graph is the position of the pre-Christmas peak. Last year it moved closer to Christmas as retailers put more effort into ensuring on time delivery and shoppers’ confidence improved. However, this year the peak moved noticeably back - to the last Sunday in November. Maybe online shoppers have become more organized and are choosing to get their Christmas shopping finished before the December panic, something that was previously the preserve of the ultra-organized.
Back in November we wrote about how high-street retailers had over-taken the pure play retailers online earlier than usual this year, so therefore it’s not very surprising to see that they are also winning the ‘January’ sales battle. As the graph below illustrates, the high street retailers were ahead all through December and significantly increased their lead on Christmas Day as sales fever kicked in. By Boxing Day, the top 50 high street retailers were receiving over twice as many UK Internet visits as their online-only rivals.
This final table shows that the five top high street retailers on Boxing Day based on their share of UK Internet visits to our Shopping and Classifieds category were Argos, Currys, Comet, Marks & Spencer and Next. Looking at this list it seems like the most popular products in the sales will be electronics and clothing.
One final point before we sign off for 2007: after a couple of nail biting episodes (from my point of view, at least), I was extremely happy to see that Alesha Dixon did indeed win Strictly Come Dancing, just as we predicted almost a month ago. See you in 2008!
Posted by Robin Goad at 10:00 AM
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In Categories Christmas | Retail | Shopping and Classifieds
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