Online Retail in the UK Takes a Major Jump

If you bought a lot of stuff online last year, especially with the recently-concluded holiday shopping season in mind, you were not alone.

Man, were you ever not alone. You join the august company of ecommerce enthusiasts like myself and a good chunk of the United Kingdom. In fact, ecommerce operations in the UK were up over the course of 2016, almost 16 percent of the total. The breakdown of the numbers, meanwhile, is even more telling.

While ecommerce operations in general were up, some were up much more than others. Sales growth from mobile devices was up 47 percent in December by itself, and ecommerce growth is only set to continue. Projections suggest that 2017 will see 14 percent higher sales than 2016 did.

IMRG’s managing director Justin Opie commented “Following a below-expectation year in 2015 (the index growth rate was 10.6 percent), online sales growth has shot back up to an extent that seemed highly unlikely at the start of the year.

There are two key factors driving this. The first is that Black Friday became an ‘online’ event in 2015, and this seems to have had a lasting effect on people’s shopping behavior and preferences—our Index has recorded strong growth for online sales ever since that day.

The second is that sales through smartphones are continuing to grow at a very strong rate, which is increasing the times and places in which people can browse and engage with online retailers.”

It’s almost self-evident; take the combination of more devices capable of handling shopping with the improved convenience and value of online shopping—just recently we found shoppers would rather wash dishes than shop in stores—and it’s clear that online shopping and mobile shopping—and of course mobile payments—are steadily gaining ground with shoppers.

It’s a problem that’s already hitting brick-and-mortar operations where they live, and representing a serious problem for their ongoing viability.

So the next time you buy online, remember; you’re not alone. There are entire countries were shopping online is gaining ground, and the UK is just one of these places.