“Mega Monday” delivered a strong sales lift for retailers who enjoyed their biggest day of online sales so far this year, despite traffic failing to reach an expected peak.
Sales were the highest so far this year, growing 14 per cent year-on-year to£320 million, according to IMRG, but many e-tailers believe next Monday could be even bigger.
Monday was only the third-busiest day for traffic this year according to Hitwise research, indicating that more shoppers were researching their purchases on- and offline over the weekend before buying their Christmas gifts.
Firebox managing director Christian Robinson said: “In the ten years that Firebox.com has been trading, yesterday was the busiest day of all time, with a record number of orders being placed. However, this is the first Christmas for a couple of seasons where the second Monday in December has fallen 15 days away from our final cut-off date for Christmas delivery. Therefore there is a strong chance that next Monday [December 15] may see similar or even greater sales.”
IMRG chief executive James Roper said that the credit crunch has encouraged more people to invest time in research this year before purchasing their gifts.
“The ratio of researching to buying is also much greater, and researching started earlier this year, as Christmas shoppers work hard to track down the best deals,” he said.
Delivery companies are in sparkling Christmas form as most had geared up for higher volumes than they are receiving so far, so there is plenty of time left for shoppers to bag Yuletide bargains.”
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