£1.23bn spent online on Black Friday

Britons spent around £1.23bn online on Black Friday (25 November), an increase of 12.2% on the same day in 2015, according to online retail association IMRG.

The figure, however, was lower that the original 16% growth predicted by IMRG, which produces the sales data in partnership with SmarterWeb. According to the association, while traffic growth was high the actual growth in sales was held back by a lower-than-expected increase in the percentage of those visitors converting to buyers.

By contrast visitor to buyer conversion was much higher in the lead up to Black Friday itself with sales growth of between 23.4% and 33.7% achieved from Monday 21 to Thursday 24 November.

Throughout the Black Friday period (defined as running from Monday 21 November to Monday 28 November), online sales totalled £6.45bn, which again was 4.8% below original forecast of £6.77bn.

This was due to the Black Friday period being stretched over a week, IMRG said, with new discounting deals promoted each day spreading the peak shopper spend over a longer period. The association is now predicting a total of £7bn in spend for 2017's Black Friday period.

IMRG managing director Justin Opie said the post-Thanksgiving promotional event imported from the US had shown "a remarkable capacity for shifting in terms of size and scale". "In 2014 the volume of orders exceeded forecast by over 30%, in 2015 we had empty shops and this year it seems to have become a genuinely extended period of heightened sales activity – taking place over a week (and more in some cases), which is not entirely dissimilar to the way that Xmas peak used to be online before Black Friday disrupted the established pattern in 2014," Opie explained.

SimilarWeb VP marketing Nitzan Tamari pointed out that online traffic (both mobile and desktop) on Black Friday itself had jumped 52% year on year, but was up 81% in the four days leading up to the big day. "While the overall growth in traffic is consistent with the general year over year growth in the category, it’s interesting that when you compare the traffic on the actual day versus the day before, you see a smaller jump this year. This indicates that retailers are creating enticing offerings earlier and consumers are feeling less pressure to buy on just one day," Tamari said.

John Lewis revealed yesterday that Black Friday was a record trading day for the department store group and came on the back of the biggest trading week in its history as sales hit almost £200m. The store's "Never Knowingly Undersold" policy means it must match other retailers' promotional activity on all products it sells. At peak trading on Black Friday it was taking five orders per second on its website.