Today, Cyber Monday, is predicted by all and sundry to be the biggest online shopping day of the year and perhaps ever.
Cyber Monday is part of the imported Thanks Giving day weekend sales and whilst largely a US event has been imported to the UK over the past few years. In 2013 it’s somewhat more significant as the vast majority of the country would have received their final pay cheque before Christmas this weekend.
Sage Pay are predicting that online spending will top £500m for the first time ever on Cyber Monday. Parcel2Go are expecting that in 2013 over half of all Christmas shopping will be done online. Rakuten’s Play.com are forecasting peaks in activity are likely to hit over lunchtime at 1pm and in the evening between 7-9pm and Amazon forecasts suggest they’ll sell around 400 million items today.
Tanya Lawler, VP of UK Marketplaces isn’t convinced that Christmas sales aren’t all about Cyber Monday, saying “It’s not just about a few busy online shopping days any longer”. Tanya explained that “On eBay, we’re expecting to see a longer peak shopping period running right up to Christmas week, including a double bubble of busy weekends. For retailers selling on eBay, the weekend of 7/8th December could be as big or even bigger than 30th November/1st December”.
How have your weekend and today’s sales been? Have you seen mammoth orders and what are you predicting for this evening? Has the economy impacted your sales compared to last year or are you seeing record breaking numbers of sales?
5 Responses
My clients have had a stonking week after being a bit worried that sales were starting later this year. Looks like the UK public is on the Black Friday/Cyber Monday bandwagon this year and only started buying stuff last week. A lot of my UK FB friends were ‘waiting’ for Black Friday deals this year!
we list nothing at all in December and relax , no missing parcels , no pet budgies with cardiac arrest, no life threatening ailments and hospital admissions because they clicked the buy button, or the item did not arrive instantly ,
we send our condolences
to the poor sods that have no option but to list in December
Sales are up about double on this time last year. We have over double the product range now also but still its good.