Forget waiting till Boxing Day, record £9billion sales start now

SHOPPERS hoping for a great bargain won’t have to wait for the traditional Boxing Day sales – they can just look online today.

Sainsbury’s and Amazon began cutting prices on their websites by up to 88 per cent from midnight, and rivals including Debenhams, John Lewis and House of Fraser are launching their own deals today.

Retail analysts say millions of Britons will spend the Christmas break searching for bargains from today – predicting as much as £9billion could be spent.

Partly thanks to the rise of online shopping, Christmas Day itself has become a big day for shopping as people ditch party games and the Queen’s speech to look for deals – and retailers expect record takings this year.

Web retail trade body IMRG predicts that spending online will rise by 10.1 per cent to a Christmas Day record of £805million.

Commercial researchers estimate that one in five Scots will log on to spend £68million on Christmas Day – up £6million on last year.

And 62 per cent of purchases are expected to be made by people logging on to their mobiles to search for bargains on a day usually reserved for low-tech family fun.

The UK-wide figure for Boxing Day spending online is expected to soar by 15 per cent to a new high of £984million.

If the sales targets prove accurate, December 26 will be the second biggest online shopping day of the year behind Black Friday, when online takings hit £1.23billion.

The internet sales will push up the figures for total takings from both retailers’ websites and their bricks-and-mortar shops.

The Centre for Retail Research expects total spending to hit £3.8billion on Boxing Day, with another £3.76billion to be spent on Tuesday through to Thursday evening.

The spending spree will kick off with the sales today, when Sains- bury’s Bank predicts £726million will be spent online and in stores. This means that in total, from today to Thursday, an eye-watering £9billion could be spent.

The rise of web shopping means the notion of customers going out and queuing in the cold for stores to open is becoming increasingly outdated, as they can shop while spending time with family at home.

Justin Opie, managing director at IMRG, said: ‘Christmas Day has actually become a fairly significant online shopping day in the UK.

‘Whereas gifts were traditionally physical items, many people now receive gift cards which they can instantly redeem to download the kinds of items that have become highly virtual – such as games, music and in-play app upgrades.

‘Many retailers will also have set their post-Christmas sales campaigns live on their sites by then, which are very easy to browse during a quiet digestive moment, post-Christmas dinner perhaps.’

The IMRG figures are produced in partnership with SimilarWeb, who are experts in website use.

Spokesman Nitzan Tamari said: ‘Last year, both Christmas and Boxing Day were big days in terms of desktop and mobile web traffic.’

The firm said there were 73million visits to UK online stores on Christmas Day alone.

But despite the growing popularity of web sales, Scotland’s shoppers yesterday embarked on a fren- zied Friday, defying the weather to spend an estimated record of £260million. The huge sum, predicted by card payment processing firm Worldpay, outstrips the £218million spent on last weekend’s Panic Saturday. Yesterday David Pierotti, general manager at Glasgow’s Silverburn shopping centre, said: ‘We welcomed more than 70,000 people – one of our busiest days of the year and up to 5 per cent ahead of where we were last year.’

Fort Kinnaird, outside Edinburgh, had one of its busiest days with 85,000 shoppers yesterday. Centre manager Liam Smith said: ‘It has been an outstanding December so far. We look forward to continuing that trend through the Boxing Day sales and beyond.’

Aberdeen’s Union Square predicts 50,000 shoppers will make a dash through its doors today.

Online from today, Sainsbury’s is offering savings of up to 56 per cent on coffee machines, TVs and household products.

Amazon said Christmas Day sales have doubled over the past five years. It expects orders to peak at 9.06pm tomorrow when people will be downloading digital content.

‘73million visits to UK online stores’ ‘An outstanding December so far’

The firm’s biggest reductions are on digital film downloads, including 88 per cent off the movie Happy Feet, taking it from £7.99 to 99p.

Carphone Warehouse’s sale began at 8.30pm yesterday, with savings of up to £200 on smartphone deals.

Debenhams began its online sale at 6am today and House of Fraser will start offering deals from noon. John Lewis’s sale begins at 5pm.

Boxing Day is always a big sale event for Next, but this is changing with the switch to internet shopping. The fashion chain will begin its sale online at 3pm today, promising cuts of at least 50 per cent.

Currys PC World starts its online sales at 9am, followed by George at Asda at 11am. The Boots online sale begins at 9pm and the Argos sale goes live at midnight tonight.

Tesco already has some deals but its full sale goes live online and in stores on Boxing Day, with cuts of up to 60 per cent.

Marks & Spencer has bucked the trend and will not launch its online sale until 5.30am on Boxing Day.