Online spend to hit £805m on Christmas Day

British consumers are set to spend £805.1m online on Christmas Day, up 10.1% on 2015.

Online retailers associaton IMRG (Interactive Media in Retail Group) also estimates that Boxing Day online sales will hit close to £1bn with a projected £984m set to be spend, up 15% on last year.

Boxing Day will be the second largest online sales day of the year, behind Black Friday (25 November 2016) when £1.23bn was spent this year.

Online sales on Boxing Day could reach higher levels in future if campaigners win their bid to ensure large shops stay shut on that day arguing workers need a rest. However, while MPs have debated the issue, it does not seem likely they will intervene as Prime Minister Theresa May has made it clear she will not tell retailers how to run their businesses.

The only restrictions on Boxing Day trading apply if it happens to fall on a Sunday, in which case normal Sunday trading rules would come into force. This year it falls on a Monday.

IMRG managing director Justin Opie said that the move to "e-gifting" will drive many of the online sales on Christmas Day. "It might not seem an obvious fixture in the retail calendar, but Christmas Day has actually become a fairly significant online shopping day in the UK. Whereas gifts were traditionally physical items, many people now receive gift cards which they can instantly redeem on the day to download the kinds of items that have become highly virtual – games, music, in-play app upgrades etc," he explained.

"Many retailers will also have set their post-Christmas sales campaigns live on their sites by then, which are very easy to browse using the kinds of devices many people have access to – smartphones, tablets etc – during a quiet digestive moment post-Christmas dinner perhaps," Opie added.

IMRG uses data from SimilarWeb to compile is projections. SimilarWeb VP marketing Nitzan Tamari said: "Last year, both Christmas and Boxing Day were big days in terms of desktop and mobile web traffic in the UK; we saw over 73m visits to the category on Christmas day alone. We’re waiting to see if Boxing Day beats Black Friday this year – these were the biggest shopping days in 2015 and last year we saw Black Friday win out by just under 3m visits."

Image: Net-A-Porter.com