The Christmas rush may still be a few weeks away for some but Experian claims marketers have just 12 days to get their online marketing strategies in place or risk missing out on an estimated 115 million visits to retail sites.
Experian Hitwise, the company’s online competitive intelligence tool, predicts that December 3 is likely to be the busiest day of the year online, with what it has dubbed ‘Cyber Monday’ seeing a 36% increase in traffic compared to 2011.
On that day, UK consumers will spend the equivalent of 15 million hours shopping online.
And “sales creep” will start earlier in the UK this year, with Experian predicting a lift in sales searches from December 15 onwards.
Last year, was a record breaker in terms of online retail, with the UK making 2.18 billion visits to retail websites and spending 343 million hours shopping online
The biggest shopping day fell on Boxing Day, with 96.2 million visits to retail sites, up 19.5% year-on-year.
Due to the leap year, ‘Cyber Monday’ falls earlier in December this year, so Experian also expects the second and third Mondays of December to perform significantly ahead of last year
The leap year will also have a significant impact on Christmas Eve – a day that’s usually one of the worst performing for online retail. This year Christmas Eve should be much bigger for online retailers due to its Monday occurrence. Mondays are usually peak shopping days throughout the year and this will be no exception
As Christmas Eve is a working day, Experian predicts this will be a popular day for Click & Collect as shoppers pick up their last minute gifts
James Murray, digital insight manager at Experian Marketing Services, said: “Christmas 2012 is on track to be another record-breaker for online retail, outstripping 2011 on all fronts. Cyber Monday will be the peak of pre-Christmas shopping in the UK so marketers need to make sure their campaigns are in place to maximise traffic on this day: it’s not too late to promote special offers through email and social media. Understanding what people are interested in, the best channels to engage customers through and when to reach them will be crucial to success this Christmas.”
