Mega Monday beckons as Christmas shoppers head online

Mega Monday will see ever more consumers make their purchases online. Photograph: Graham Turner

Last year it (wrongly) predicted we'd all be finding Borat-style mankinis under the tree; this year Amazon says Christmas shoppers are logging on to buy iPod Touches, Joseph & Joseph chopping boards and the latest Dan Brown novel. As Mega Monday – the day Visa Europe predicts will be the UK's biggest online shopping day of the year – gets into full swing, the retailer is one of many expecting bumper internet sales this year.
Visa predicts 2.4m online purchases will made in the UK today using one of its credit or debit cards, which it says account for around 20% of consumer spending. It suggests sales will peak at lunchtime and again at around 7pm when people log on at home. If it is right, the figures will represent a 9% increase on last year's busiest day – 9 December – and a 34% uplift on the busiest day in 2007.
For Amazon, last year's busiest day was 8 December when in a 24-hour period it received 1.4m orders, the equivalent of 16 every second. This year it is anticipating even more sales. An Amazon spokeswoman said: "We are certainly expecting our busiest Christmas on record. Every year, we see more and more customers discovering the benefits of shopping on the internet, including low prices, vast selection and convenient delivery options."
John Lewis has already beaten its own 2008 record for online Christmas sales – on 22 November it sold 48% more than it did on its best-selling day last year – and monthly sales are up between 30% and 40% year-on-year. "Consumer confidence is coming back," according to head of online selling, Jonathon Brown. "The last few months have been fantastic as customers are shopping for Christmas and we are definitely seeing a surge."
Home Retail Group, the company behind Argos, has already seen huge growth online this year, with figures from data analysts Comscore showing a 25% increase in traffic to its sites. Ross Clenmow, the retailer's head of multi-channel, said it looked set to be "a bumper Christmas".
Smaller shops are also banking on internet sales to see them through the end of the year. Angus McArthur who runs design store Snowhome in York saw online orders double in November. "Two years ago, 10% of our turnover was from online sales. Now it is more like 20%," he said. "For us, there is no single busy day for Christmas orders – it is more like 40 busy days before Christmas."

Best deals online

Certainly, shoppers are continuing to migrate online as broadband access becomes more widespread and fears about security subside. Figures from IMRG, the industry body for online retailers, show that in the UK internet sales have grown by 14% so far this year, with shoppers spending just under £40bn in the 10 months to the end of October. Last year, UK consumers spent an estimated £9.3bn online during November and December, and this year IMRG expects sales to be 15% higher.
"Despite the recession, the e-retail market is still growing as cash-strapped consumers look to the internet to find the best possible deals," the group's director of information, Tina Spooner, said. "I think online retailers can look forward to a very merry Christmas."
According to IMRG, the strongest performing sectors since the start of this year have been clothing and electricals, where despite taking a hit during the recent postal strikes sales are up by 18% and 20% respectively.
Figures from Comscore put book retailers at the top of the tree, receiving 18m visitors to their sites in October this year, 38% up on the same period last year. Clothing retailers are next with 16m visitors during the month, a rise of 11% on October last year.
Retail analysts Verdict Research say that online purchases this year will account for 7.3% of all retail spending, compared to just 1% in 1999. However, in some sectors more spending has made its way on to the internet – a fact borne out by this week's demise of high street bookseller Borders, and last year's collapse of Zavvi.
This year, slightly less than 50% of spending on music and video will be done online compared with 40% last year and 3% back in 1999. For electrical goods, Verdict estimates online spending will represent 24% of the market compared with 19% last year, and on books it says the figure has increased from 15.5% last year to 19%.
Malcolm Pinkerton, a senior analyst at Verdict, said that over the next five years he expected the key drivers for online growth to be food, footwear and clothes. But it is the music and video market that is destined to see most business go online, with Verdict predicting 73% of spending will be done remotely by 2013