There still seems to be no sign of the festive online shopping boom tailing off, with figures from John Lewis and price comparison service InvisibleHand both indicating on-going growth in the market.
John Lewis’ latest weekly trading figures show that online sales were up by over 50% on a year ago. “It is in weeks such as this that our multi-channel offer delivers its ultimate value,” says the company. “With harsh weather restricting many customers to their homes, they turned to their phones and computers in order to make their purchases from us. Johnlewis.com recorded a stunning 56% gain on the 2009 comparison — with Fashion faring particularly well.”
First time online shopper registrations for WaitroseDeliver were also significantly up. “Despite the challenging conditions, WaitroseDeliver put in a strong performance,” the partnership’s supermarket arm reports. “The icy conditions spurred many who hadn’t previously shopped online to make their first order, in preference to braving the cold themselves, and last week saw a 283% increase in new registrations compared with the same time last year.”
Figures released by InvisibleHand, the price comparison broswser add-on for Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome, indicate that the increase in online shopping is widespread. The company has found that online shopping activity during the first 10 days of January is up 27% on even the ten days running up to Christmas Day.
“Over 40% of online shopping activity since the beginning of the new decade has focused on luxury electronic items such as televisions, iPods and gaming technology,” says the company. “This indicates that, despite a 2.5% hike in tax, consumers are not afraid to shell out for the products they covet, as televisions in particular had an average price tag of over £400.”
