In my inbox today I received an email from a North East business news website called bdaily.info. It has some rather staggering facts on ecommerce that I thought I would share with you all, as it certainly makes for an interesting read.

Last Christmas over 42% of consumers from the North East chose to do half or more of their shopping online.

Fast forward to December 2008 and online shopping looks to be hitting record levels all over the country and the world. On Monday 1st December industry analysts estimated that a whopping 4.6 million online shopping transactions were made. With customers spending roughly £300 million on the 1st this averages to just under £65 per transaction.

Retail Decisions, a card transaction firm, have predicted that the busiest minute for online shopping will be 1.21pm on December 8th – with over £980,000 predicted to be spent by consumers in this minute.  How they have estimated the figure I have no idea but it is certainly impressive!

Now forgive me for mentioning the ‘crunch’ as I’m sure we’ve all heard and talked enough about it, however its comforting for retailers who have invested in ecommerce to know that the market is certainly bucking the current decline in high street spending where consumers are choosing to keep their hard earned money firmly in their pockets.

Of course the ecommerce boom must certainly be adding to the decline to high street sales, which recently showed a 3.5% fall during the last week of November compared to same time period a year ago.

These figures show in the past couple of years there has been a huge cultural shift in the way consumers purchase goods. Retailers without ecommerce stores would be wise to take note of the current state of the music industry, which failed to adapt quickly enough to the evolving buying habits of their customers and are suffering the consequences for it now.

Written by: david.scott