Amazon, Argos and eBay were the big winners of Cyber Monday, according to insight from Experian’s online competitive intelligence tool Hitwise, which shows December 3 smashed all records for web retailers.
These three companies accounted for 30% of all visits to the retail category on the day and 62% of all retail visits went to the top 100 websites in the industry, showing the strength of the biggest online shopping brands.
British Internet users made 112 million visits to retail websites, the most visits the retail industry has ever seen in a single day. This represents a 32% increase compared to last year. It seems that even the nationwide broadband issues faced by BT customers could not halt UK shoppers’ stampede online.
UK consumers also set new records for the amount of time spent shopping online in a single day, spending 15 hours on retail sites. On average consumers spent 8 minutes and 12 seconds per visit on Monday.
Analysis of the fast moving websites with the largest increases in market share of visits this year compared to Cyber Monday 2011, revealed that Amazon’s combined properties (.com and .co.uk) experienced the largest increase overall, accounting for 12.18% of all retail visits on Cyber Monday 2012, up from 10.85% last year.
Two mobile websites were also among the fastest movers. eBay UK Mobile (ranked 16th most popular retailer overall) and Argos Mobile (ranked 40th) were the third and sixth fastest moving websites respectively on Cyber Monday, showing the UK’s increased appetite to shop on mobile devices. NotOnTheHighStreet.com managed to double its market share of visits from last year, indicating a desire for more unusual gifts this Christmas beyond the standard socks and cufflinks.
Experian Marketing Services digital insight manager James Murray said: “There is still plenty of shopping time between now and Christmas, and in particular we are expecting a lot of last-minute panic buying online on Christmas Eve as consumers take advantage of click-and-collect services.
“Marketers need to be aware of these trends so they can engage with their customers at the right time to maximise sales in what could be a bumper Christmas year for online retail.”
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