September’s mail order and online sales rose 11.9 percent on last year 

Retail sales also did well last month – 2.8 percent up on last year, the highest year-on-year growth since April according to the British Retail Consortium.

I’ve always thought that we’d come out of recession quickly and that there would be a surge from build up of demand where people would make the purchases they had been putting off whilst listening to the doom merchants.

On-line sales being up nearly 12% is quite a figure, bearing in mind that we’ve only just paid for the summer holiday and looking forward to Christmas expense.

Over recent weeks we’ve noticed that many clients have moved from saying ‘we’re doing alright but we’d better be careful because we don’t know what next month will be like…‘we’ve got some of the budget back that was taken away earlier this year and we need to generate leads/sales/activity before the year end’

Time to get busy!

Phil

The number of online shoppers will rise from 26.9m to 31.8m by 2013 – over half of the UK population.

Although the recession has led to some interesting changes in online shopping habits particularly in 14-17-year-olds, as their parents curb spending.

Because this group still rely on income from their parents and have a general lack of direct credit themselves their discretionary spending has been curbed as families tighten their belts. Online buying will pick up again in 2011 as the economy improves for families.

Overall 72.5% of all web users are likely to shop online this year, with the proportion increasing to 75.7% by 2013.

Steve