Online Christmas Sales Booming In The UK, Driven By Mobile

Analysis of sales in the UK for the Christmas 2013 period shows that some of multichannel retailers were seeing continued switching from offline to online purchasing. Sales at John Lewis were up 6.9% on a like-for-like basis in the five weeks to 28 December 2013, but online sales jumped 22.6%. johnlewis.com contributed nearly 32% of all John Lewis sales in this period. Its Click & Collect orders were up over 62%. House of Fraser saw like-for-like sales increase 7.3% in the three weeks to 28 December, but online sales were up nearly 58%. The IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark shows that online sales on Boxing Day 2013 were up over 40% on the same day in 2012. Mobile commerce is gaining traction. Christmas Day traffic from mobile phones and tablets represented three quarters of total online traffic, and IBM data for Boxing Day show that 58% of online traffic came from mobile devices, and particularly smartphones (nearly 30% of all online traffic), but the tablet was the device of choice for those making purchases (29.4% of online sales).