Amazon foresees big sales for Cyber Monday 2013

Friday, November 8, 2013 - 14:04 by Graham Miller

Earlier this week it was reported that analysts have pointed to Monday December 2nd as being the year's busiest day for safe shopping online, but now e-commerce giant, Amazon, has weighed in with its own predictions and announcements, for what is regularly referred to as Cyber Monday.

On the same day in 2012, Amazon customers placed orders for 3.5 million products in the course of 24 hours, which works out to roughly 41 a second, according to Retail Gazette.

In anticipation of the rush this year, Amazon is expanding its staff by 15,000 on a temporary basis, to ensure that it can fulfil all of the online orders that are predicted to be placed over the course of December.

Amazon spokesperson, Xavier Garambois, said that the site is expecting to see traffic levels hit a peak at 6pm on Cyber Monday, which is actually a lot earlier than in previous years.

The reason for this is that more people are expected to carry out safe shopping online from smartphones and tablets while they are on the homeward commute early in the evening, giving them more free time when they get home.

Back in 2011, the peak occurred at 9.20pm, which is a lot later, but at the time, fewer people in the UK had access to portable devices that would have allowed them to harness e-commerce services.

UK shoppers should also look out for Black Friday Deals Week, which Amazon is kicking off over here on the 25th of November.

Black Friday is a major event in the US, but is only just being translated over to the UK. Amazon is expected to create 2,000 unique offers on the kinds of gifts that will be a hit this Christmas, doubling the number seen in 2012.