Postal strikes cost online retailers £53 million, says IMRG

British shoppers spent £4.2 billion online in October, according to the latest IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index, but growth in online sales slowed during the postal strikes. Overall, October saw both a year on year of 11.8% and a month on month growth of 8.4% in online retail sales.

Roberto Cavalli opens first online store

Roberto Cavalli has become the latest designer to open an online store. Powered by Yoox Group, which specialises in delivering online shopping solutions for leading fashion and design brands, the new site will serve consumers in 46 countries in Europe, the Americas and Asia.

25% of consumers now happy to spend £1,000 or more on a single product online

Consumer expectations and willingness to spend online during the Christmas peak season are higher than ever before according to the 2009 Consumer eTail Report from GSI Commerce.
A quarter of people are willing to spend more than £1,000 on a product online this year, compared with just 12% in 2008, the research found, and there has [...]

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Email marketing grew by 24 [...]

Profile of the ‘average’ Twitter user

The average ‘tweeter’ is a professional male who is active in IT, media/advertising or the consulting business- strikingly similar to early internet users- according to a new comprehensive study of Twitter users.
The typical user also ‘speaks’ to brands via the social networking platform in the hope that they will ‘answer.’
Over 50,000 tweets from 620 habitual [...]

Argos adds dedicated websites for financial services and more

Argos has launched a dedicated price comparison site for financial services. Argoscompare.co.uk covers loans, mortgages, credit cards and bank accounts, plus insurance for vehicles, homes and travel.
The retailer, which launched a dedicated entertainment site managed by The Hut earlier this year, has also added argosgifts.co.uk and argosspares.co.uk to its portfolio of sites. Source Internetretailing.co.uk

Online sales could save the traditional high street says eBay

A new survey from eBay has found that four-fifths of sellers who also have a bricks and mortar presence believe the rise of internet retailing is saving, rather than harming, their business.
The findings from the third Online Business Index “demolish claims that online retail is responsible for the decline of the traditional high street business,” [...]

Retailers enjoy best October for seven years as NFNS grows 18%

UK retail sales values rose 3.8% on a like-for-like basis from October 2008 and internet, mail-order and phone sales were 18.0% higher than a year ago — despite the Royal Mail industrial action, according to the latest British Retail Consortium-KPMG Retail Sales Monitor report.
The faster growth rate in October than in September was in line [...]

Consumers to spend £8.9bn online this Christmas

Online spending is to reach a total of £8.9 billion this Christmas, representing 20p in every £1 spent, and a 24% increase on previous years, according to research carried out by the Centre for Retail Research for Kelkoo.
‘Christmas 2009: Blue Skies or Storm Clouds’ found that, in total, sales in the six weeks to Christmas [...]

93% of consumers will buy a gift online this Christmas

93% of UK consumers plan to shop online for their Christmas gifts this year, with more than a quarter planning to do more shopping online than last year, according to the latest e-Customer Service Index (eCSI) from eDigitalResearch and IMRG.
The survey of 2,804 people asked questions about their shopping habits in the run up to [...]