Post-Christmas retail round up: online and offline traffic spikes on Boxing Day

The post-Christmas period has become increasingly important for online retailers – and this year is proving no exception. Boxing Day (December 26th) was again the busiest day for online retailers during 2009, while, as the chart below illustrates, December 27th was the second busiest - exceeding even the pre-Christmas peaks on December 6th and 7th (the so-called “Cyber Sunday” and “Cyber Monday”).

However, despite the Boxing Day and December 27th (Boxing Boxing Day? Why not – December 23rd seems to have become Christmas Eve Eve!) surge, there was less of a Christmas Day surge this year than last. UK Internet visits to online retailers increased by 36% between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day this year, whereas last year the figure was 39%. Last year Christmas Day was the seventh busiest for online retailers; this year it is more likely to be something like the 30th.

The table below lists the 15 most visited Shopping and Classifieds websites in the UK on Boxing Day. Retailers that received an above average spike in traffic after Christmas included: Next, Currys, Debenhams, Tesco Direct, Comet, and PC World.

The stores that performed well in the list above generally did so because they were hosting a popular sale. UK sales related searches increase by 25% last week. The table below lists the top 20 search terms containing word ‘sale’ that were typed into a search engine on Boxing Day, and many of the same names appear. As is typical at this time of year, the most popular term was ‘next sale’, which accounted for 1 in 7 sale-related searches.

Most of the ‘sale’ terms in the table above relate to the fashion and consumer electronics sectors, or to department sores. The majority also refer to multi-channel retailers – i.e. those with both a high street and web presence. As the chart below illustrates, traffic to websites of high street retailers increased last week – in fact, the week ending 26/12/09 was their busiest online this year – while online-only retailers experienced a decrease in UK Internet visits.

The chart above nicely illustrates two observations that we have made about the post-Christmas sales period online. Firstly, with a few notable exceptions, it is hard to recreate the offline sales experience of hunting the racks and shelves to find a bargain online. Second, it is vital that high street retailers publicise their sales on their websites because many bargain hunters first browse online before hitting the malls and high streets on Boxing Day (or at any other point during January sales). And these days are vital for high street retailers: according to our colleagues at Experian Footfall, ‘offline’ shopper numbers were up 18.5% on last year this Boxing Day, and 17.9% for December 27th.