Bill James' blog

Here is a quick round up on Christmas Eve of stats for online spending so far this Christmas (2009)…

According to Hitwise – peak online spending days (UK)

• Cyber Monday’ (Dec 7) and Sunday December 6 were the joint busiest days for online retailers so far this year, meaning that the peak for Christmas online shopping has moved closer to the 25th. The busiest day for online retailers in 2008 was Sunday November 30.
• Department stores and supermarkets have been the biggest beneficiaries of the shift towards later online shopping this Christmas, though Amazon had the biggest increase in visits.
• According to MetaPack stats, Cyber Monday remains the highest shopping day in the UK with sales on Monday 14 decreasing by 2% on the 7th.
• On December 7, £1.4m was spent online at 13:43 in just one minute, with sales peaking at £33m between 13:00 and 14:00. (IMRG)

Average (UK) order size / value according to Coremetrics

• Coremetrics figures show that  the value of the average order placed online is up by 94% this Christmas, compared to 2008.
• The number of goods that are purchased per transaction has also increased significantly, from 2.7 items in 2007 to 3.7 per order in 2009.

Last year the big surprise was a big online spending day on Christmas Day – let’s see what happens this time!