Christmas has come early for online retailers as smartphone wielding Brits shed the purse strings and spend, spend, spend.
In fact, internet shopping is so popular in the UK that we do more of it than any other country in the world, according to Ofcom.
In the UK we spend an average of £1,083 a year shopping online, compared to Australia in second place, where people spend an average of £842. And that figure pales into insignificance when compared to Mega Monday — December 3 this year — when UK shoppers spent a staggering £320m or £3,700 per second.
Our enthusiasm for internet shopping is, in part, driven by the proliferation of connected mobile devices, and while Mega Monday was predicted to be the busiest online shopping day of the year, there’s sure to be more big-spending before the Christmas Day.
Richard Vining, BT Fresca’s head of performance for BT’s e-commerce solution the FrescaCommerce© platform, said: “It’s also interesting to note just how consumers purchased their presents in 2012. [The] number of people buying through a mobile device almost doubled compared to last year.
“And the most impressive increase in this area was the percentage of online sales made on iPads — which saw a monumental 194.4 per cent increase on 2011.”
The affordability of consumer connectivity in the UK is cited as a big reason we’ve seen such a proliferation of mobile devices in the world of retail. And it is helping to drive a shift in the way we all live.
Consumers are not only shopping on their devices, but when they go into store they’re expectant of a seamless retail experience, with no difference between the product availability and service online or in store.
Find out more about multichannel retailing or BT’s FrescaCommerce© platform.
