Boxing Day is forecast to see sales of almost £1 billion online, with total spend expected to reach £984m, according to e-retail expert IMRG.
This is a 15 per cent increase on the £856m taken on Boxing Day 2015, but it would still put Boxing Day behind Black Friday as the biggest shopping day of the year, when spending was estimated to be £1.23bn this year.
On Christmas Day, online spending is expected to hit £805 million, a 10.1 per cent increase on the £728m spent on the same day last year.
Justin Opie, managing director at IMRG, said: “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 that 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. 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.”
