England’s World Cup exit impacted online shopping

Thursday, August 23, 2018 - 13:07 by Graham Miller

While the World Cup was a boon for retailers while England were flying high and racking up victories, new stats from IMRG suggest that there was a downturn in safe shopping online after the team was booted out by Croatia.

Analysts found that e-commerce sales were up by 10 per cent during July, which represents a fall in growth compared to the average increases recorded over the past year.

In the first half of the month it looked like the market was on track for a 14.4 per cent boost to online spending, but following England’s defeat there was a sharp decline in activity which counteracted this early uptick.

This data is all the more interesting given that mid-July saw the arrival of Amazon Prime Day, with discounts and deals intended to stimulate spending apparently failing to have a marked impact on shopping online overall.

Report spokesperson, Bhavesh Unadkat, said that part of the problem was down to conversion rates; while plenty of people were checking out Prime Day offers, not as many were committing to making a purchase in 2018 as they had during the same promotional period last year.

One solution suggested by experts is for e-commerce sites to reduce the focus they currently place on short term bargains and instead keep their prices lower throughout the year to try and inject a little more consistency and reliability into the marketplace.

This will not only keep consumers coming back more regularly, but will also allow web-based retailers to compete more effectively with bricks and mortar outlets when fine weather conditions encourage people out into the high street.

Meanwhile the fact that the nation’s mood and willingness to spend cash online can be swayed so much by the results of a football game is a sign of just how much Brits love the sport.