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High street retailers continue to pull ahead of pure plays in online sales

The internet properties of the UK’s top 100 high street retailers received 19.3% more visits during July than the 100 largest online-only retailers, says a new Hitwise report. And it’s the fashion sector that’s fuelling the high street’s growth online…

The speed with which the high street is catching up with and overtaking pure play internet specialists is gathering pace. In July, the number of visits to the websites of the one hundred largest online high street retailers was 19.3% higher than the number of visits to the one hundred largest pure play retailers, says a new Hitwise report ‘Can retailers have a happy Christmas during the credit crunch?’

“High street retailers overtook their online only counterparts for the first time during December 2006, but quickly fell behind again for most of 2007,” explained Robin Goad, Hitwise UK’s research director. “However, when the high street overtook again last Christmas, the gap was even greater than before and during 2008 the online-only retailers only managed to edge ahead during February.”

“Given the 2.6% year-on-year decline in actual physical visits to retailers reported by Experian Footfall for July, it looks like high street retailers will be more reliant than ever on their online operations this Christmas,” Goad noted.

Online fashion retailing is now particularly dominated by major high street brands, which accounted for seven of the top ten websites in the category during June, says the report. “The growth of the online fashion industry has been one of the main contributors to the increasing market share of high street retailers online,” says Robin Goad.

“However, there are exceptions to the rule. ASOS was the second most visited website in our ‘Shopping and Classifieds — Apparel and Accessories’ category in July 2008. UK Internet traffic to online-only fashion retailers has more than doubled over the last 12 months.”

In addition to major high street brands such as Next, Top Shop and River Island, the top 10 online fashion retailers in June also included two other remote shopping specialists, M and M Direct and Boden.

Online shopping “better for bargains”

Some 62% of shoppers believe shopping online will save them money during the credit crunch according to a poll conducted by discount etailer M&M Direct.

Some 61% of the 1,000 people polled by M&M Direct and Voxpopuk.com, said that they would now be actively looking for bargains while 56% said they would save money by not spending so much on luxury items.

45% of respondents said that bargains were easier to come by online.

When asked if the credit crunch would affect their broader spending habits, 48% of respondents said no, while 54% said that it would not affect their decision to purchase cars, holidays or other large expensive items.

M&M Direct chief executive Steve Robinson said: “The survey shows that the UK consumer is in the process of becoming savvier when it comes to spending money. They want to continue to shop for what they want, but realise they can find bargains online and cut back in key areas to help combat the effects of the credit crunch.”

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Soaring online sales defy credit crunch

UK shoppers spent over £26.5 billion online in the first six months of this year despite the credit crunch, up 38% on the first half of 2007.

According to figures from the IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index, 17p in every pound was spent online during the first half of the year. Clothing is faring well out of the reported online boom, with £1.76 bn spent on clothes online by UK shoppers in the first half 2008.

James Roper, chief executive and founder of IMRG, said that online shopping growth continues to out-perform the high street and predicted that 30% to 50% of all retail will be online in the next five years.

He said: “As tight budgets and poor weather keep people at home where they can shop online for bargains.

“Clothing and footwear sales were the biggest losers in physical stores in June, with sales either flat or lower than last year despite heavy and widespread discounting.

“However, online they were big winners. Internet clothing sales were up 32%, while lingerie sales rose by 37% and footwear 38%.”

Shoppers spent a record amount on clothes in March, a month-on-month growth of 21.8%, and 31.2% more than March last year.