Online shopping boom as consumers spend £1.4 million in a minute

12 April 2012

£1.4million was spent online in just one minute today as retailers experienced the biggest online sales ever recorded.

Experts say the total spend for what is dubbed 'mega monday' could exceed earlier estimates and reach £534million.

Payment processing firm Retail Decisions (ReD) said it had recorded sales of £1.4million at 1:43pm, making today the busiest online shopping minute ever.

The busiest online shopping hour was between 13:00 and 14:00, when £33 million of sales were made online.

Retailers said sales were up 10% on last week, with consumers expected to spend over £350m.

"Today will be the biggest day for e-commerce in history, without question," said Stuart Rowe, Chief Operating Officer of Play.com. "Last monday was huge for us, but today will be even bigger. Online shopping really has become mass market."

Play.com is expecting to process between 1,000 and 1,100 orders per minute, at peak trading hours today.

The online retailer is also expecting to ship over 550,000 units, representing an impressive 340 tonnes of goods including toys, books, DVDS, CDs, electronics and video games.

It said peak purchasing times are now falling around breakfast time at 9am as mothers go online after the school run, with an even larger peak between 7-8pm as people arrive home.

Some experts say sales could be 40% higher than last year.

"We are seeing an increase of 40% on last year, and a 10% increase on last monday," said Simon Black of Sage Pay, which runs the online payment systems for 26,000 shopping sites.

Mr Black says there could even be a third mega monday next week as shoppers rush to finish their christmas shopping.

"The average customer is also spending more than £100, so we fully expect today to be the biggest day for online retail, even though last monday was also huge. However, we do think the rest of the wee, and even next monday, will also be big."

Nat Wakely, director of Selling Operations for John Lewis, said: "We've just seen a record week of sales ever for John Lewis Direct, 26.4 per cent up on last year. With trade growing week-on-week, we predict a new Mega Monday sales record."

Zavvi.com said it expects to ship more than 500,000 units today – representing more than 1,000 tonnes of goods.

David Smith, Director of Operations, at IMRG says, "IMRG members are gearing themselves for a very busy Christmas and along with the £350m spent online on Monday 7th December, for the month as a whole we expect sales to reach £5bn which will be an increase of 14% year on year."

Mega Monday top sellers

1. New Moon – Stephanie Meyer - £4.99 (BOOKS)
2. Call of Duty – World of Warfare Xbox 360/PS3 - £44.99 (GAMES)
3. Michael McIntyre: Hello Wembley DVD - £10.99 (DVD)
4. Susan Boyle – I Dreamed a Dream CD - £8.95 (MUSIC)
5. Monopoly Game - City Edition - £19.99 (TOYS)
6. Breo - Skin Watch - £19.99 (CLOTHING)
7. The Twilight Saga: Twilight: Scene It? - £34.99 (GADGETS)
8. Black Nintendo Wii Console - £164.99 (GAMES)
9. Sony BDP-S360 Blu-ray Disc Player - £134.99 (With 3 Free Films (Angels & Demons, Slum Dog Millionaire and Terminator Salvation) (ELECTRONICS)
10. BeBook e-Reader - £179.99 (ELECTRONICS)

source: play.com

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in