E-commerce sites nab 25 per cent of Black Friday spending

Wednesday, December 7, 2016 - 12:26 by Sarah Collinson

The British Retail Consortium has confirmed that shopping online is more potent and influential than ever, with one pound in every four spent over the course of the Black Friday weekend accounted for by e-commerce sites.

Furthermore, November as a whole saw yet more records being set, with 27.6 per cent of retail sales, excluding food items, being generated online, according to the Telegraph.

Web-based sales were up by 10.9 per cent year on year, which is slightly lower than during the same month in 2015, but maintains double digit growth for safe shopping online at a time when the high street is continuing to flounder.

Black Friday’s £1.23 billion outpouring of cash from consumers to retailers was just the kind of pre-Christmas boost that many firms were anticipating. And the BRC’s chief exec, Helen Dickinson, said that as many shoppers tend to privilege low prices above all else, this type of event is necessary to build momentum in the marketplace at key points in the year.

Other industry analysts were less convinced by the benefits of Black Friday, with KPMG’s Paul Martin pointing out that while massive amounts of money had been spent over the weekend, retailers would now face the significant challenge of dealing with a raft of returns, as people send back items they decide they do not actually need.

Martin said that this could have a knock-on effect when it comes to the pre-Christmas delivery process, giving retailers a tougher time of fulfilling customer expectations when attempting to dispatch all items in a timely fashion.

While online sales growth may not be as high as it once was, it is still increasing its share of the market and pushing the high street into a trickier position.