Sage Pay reveals that online spending will hit a record £13bn this Christmas.
The findings come as it is revealed that offline retailers may be missing out on almost £88bn. Sage Pay also stated that the need to be online has never been greater.
It looks like Santa’s sleigh will be pretty packed this year!
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UK consumer confidence continues to boom as the UK emerges from an eight year recession, with many retailers across Britain already gearing up to make the most of the spending spree. Stores such as Selfridges has already opened its Christmas floor more than two weeks ago, which suggest that many of us are already thinking about buying gifts online.
To help those retailers who are not yet online, Sage Pay have announced that they are to run a competition named ‘Business Booster’, giving start-ups, entrepreneurs and small businesses the chance to win a £25k prize packages which is designed to boost online sales. Included in the prize will be a TV advert, custom digital ad campaign, an expert review of digital assets and free Sage Pay payment processing for a year.
“With record online spending predicted for Christmas 2014, it’s never been more important for small businesses to be online,” said Simon Black, CEO of Sage Pay. “Most larger retailers are already preparing themselves for Christmas, and if independent merchants want to capitalise on consumers’ confidence, they need to follow suit and begin preparing too.”
“That starts with making sure your website and payments systems are optimised for the high volumes of traffic experienced on CyberMonday. However, an alarming amount of UK SMBs are still not online. This will have a serious business impact not only for Christmas, but in the longer term as the exponential rise in online spending continues.”
Ranjit Singh, commercial director at art materials stockists and Sage Pay customer Cass Art, said: “At Cass Art, we pride ourselves on making art accessible to all. However, we realised that unless we had an online presence, we were missing out on serving a huge customer base across the UK. This was significantly restricting our sales opportunities, particularly around the Christmas period.
“Our site went live just before Cyber Monday last year and we were surprised by the huge increase in sales. We saw our transactions rise by over 100%. This year we have prepared early for the hike in web traffic and sales, and already have our strategy in place. Our advice to businesses would be to prepare for Christmas as early as you can.”
Will you be spending more online or in-store this Christmas? Comment below and let us know.
