Simon Jackson, chief commercial officer at NetNames writes .. “Online retailers in the UK are gearing up for the busiest day of the year with online retail spend set to hit over £420 million in the UK on Cyber Monday. However, our research into the UK’s online shopping trends suggests that this Monday will only be the start of a record breaking four week period of ecommerce spend.
Whilst we will see a surge in online traffic with over 110 million visits to online retail websites on 3rd December, Mondays will remain the most popular online shopping day throughout December and we will witness increased spending at the start of the week right up until Christmas Eve. However, it will be Boxing Day when the UK sees records broken and we predict that there will be 140 million visits to online retail sites and approximately £500 million spent as retailers launch post-Christmas sales in the UK.
Whilst many retailers will slash their prices to attract bargain hunters in the run up to Christmas, consumers must remain wary of “too good to be true offers” for the must-have festive gifts. As part of a recent study into counterfeit goods, we discovered over 88,000 thousand listings for the top ten “must-have” Christmas toys, for example, 1,600 listings were discovered for LeapPad2s on online marketplace sites. However to avoid falling victim to the latest online scams, consumers need to remember that if the price seems too good to be true, it probably is. Companies need online brand protection to safeguard their reputation, revenues and customers.”