Christmas Ecommerce: 25% of UK Consumers Start Shopping Early...

With the festive season being such a busy time for shopping, all retailers well know the benefit of starting preparations in plenty of time. New research from eBay Ads UK suggests that a quarter of UK shoppers have already started their Christmas shopping this year so retailers need to be ready earlier than ever before.

The opinions of 2,000 consumers in the UK who celebrate Christmas were sought by eBay Ads UK to compile the new research. Results showed that people generally felt much more optimistic about Christmas 2021, anticipating a return to more normal celebrations after the previous year was more or less cancelled due to COVID-19.

Three out of five survey respondents felt optimistic that they would be able to return to their usual celebrations this year, with just under half saying that they think Christmas 2021 will feel 'traditional'. A quarter of respondents said that they thought Christmas would be 'more exciting' this year, compared to just 16% in 2020.

A key finding of the survey by eBay Ads UK was that 27% of people plan to start Christmas preparations, including shopping, earlier than they did in 2020.  41% of respondents said that they will have finished all of their Christmas shopping before the beginning of December 2021: this is a massive increase compared to the previous year's figure of just 25%.

Mostly due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the average spend on Christmas shopping was lower in 2020 than in 2019 (£527.88 and £551.34 respectively). The recent research found that 30% of consumers plan to spend more this year, attributable to increased confidence and optimism. Only 13% of consumers planned to increase Christmas spending last year, with 31% planning to spend less.

All sources are predicting that online Christmas sales (including Black Friday and Cyber Monday) will set new records this year. From updating product descriptions and optimising SEO strategy to preparing for traffic spikes and enhancing website performance, the time for ecommerce websites to start preparing for Christmas 2021 is RIGHT NOW.

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