Web sales no match for worst December in 14 years

Online sales went from strength to strength during the festive season, despite an overall decline in consumer spending.

According to new research from the British Retail Consortium (BRC), non-food non-store sales in December - the vast majority of which were made online - were up 30 per cent on the same period in 2007.

The BRC has said the increase shows people are getting more confident about shopping on the web at Christmas, with the introduction of later last-order dates helping to convince them.

Head of non-store retailing at the BRC, Sharin Hardiman, said that although web and other non-store sales channels are growing quickly, they remain too small a proportion of total revenue to compensate for the retail sector's poor overall performance - the Office of National Statistics estimates that non-store sales make up just four per cent of total sales.

According to the BRC, overall retail sales fell by 1.4 per cent compared to December 2007 - the worst December since the organisation began its research 14 years ago.

In addition to the BRC figures, market researcher Nielsen Online found the number of unique users for the top 10 online retailers between October and December was an average of 37 per cent higher year-on-year.

The UK's most popular online retailer during the Christmas quarter was Amazon, which had an average of 15.6 million unique visitors per month in Q4 - an 18 per cent increase on 2007.

Argos and Tesco trailed with an average of 8.2 million and 7.3 million unique visitors respectively but both showed significant increase, notching up a 32 per cent and 15 per cent increase between them.

The jump in online visitors seems to have translated into increased sales for Tesco: sales figures for tesco.com and Tesco Direct rose by more than 18 per cent to £273m during the seven weeks prior to 10 January.

Overall sales during the Christmas and New Year period also increased for the retailer, with an 11.6 per cent year-on-year rise.