Online sales rise hits the brakes

Post by Tom Blackburn on 7th February 2012
 in E-commerce, Retail

The growth in online sales in the UK in January was just over half the rate seen in December, a statistic which analysts said showed shoppers had "returned to reality".

While in the month of Christmas, online sales grew at 18.5 per cent year-on-year, last month that rate slowed to 11.3 per cent, according to the British Retail Consortium.

Shoppers spent most of January looking for bargains, the BRC said in its monthly Retail Sales Monitor, published in conjunction with accountancy firm KPMG.

Overall, the BRC concluded, this January was the second worst for the retail sector since 1995. The only year in which performance was worse was 2010.

BRC director-general Stephen Robertson said that the migration of people to online channels had simply meant that more people were browsing rather than buying: "Massive growth in online retail searches is not translating into the same rate of sales growth," he said.

"People are shopping around and making careful decisions about what to buy," Mr Robertson added.