E-tailers expect sales surge for Christmas but worry about deliveries

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Nov 9, 2016

Nearly half of UK retailers expect their online sales to rise this year but many are worried about their ability to fulfil the deluge of orders, a new survey from ChannelAdvisor Corporation shows.

The company spoke to 102 UK e-tailers and found 47% expect to increase their online sales this festive season with 21% expecting sales to rise more than 10%.

The survey also showed that 50% of retailers are starting their Christmas campaigns in August or earlier, compared to 42% a year ago.

Survey respondents also said that Black Friday is their most profitable day online (26%), followed by Amazon Prime day (22%) and Cyber Monday (15%). As a result, nearly 40% plan to increase digital marketing and advertising spend, with many retailers offering more promotions specifically around Black Friday

But with all the extra orders, 51% of the retailers questioned said that their biggest challenge for the holiday season is order fulfilment. With Christmas falling on a Sunday this year, this could become a particularly thorny obstacle for retailers to overcome if consumers leave their last-minute shopping until later on in the working week.

The research found that 38% of retailers are offering a 20 December cut-off date this year for guaranteed on-time deliveries with 52% retailers offering same-day delivery and 66% offering next-day delivery.

Other findings included 66% of UK retailers now have a mobile app for m-commerce and 62% claim Facebook is the top social platform for sales conversions.

Meanwhile 66% of retailers said PayPal is the most popular payment method used by customers after debit and credit cards, followed by Amazon Payments (19%) and Apple Pay (6%).