Big high street names saw strong growth in online sales over Christmas, but niche players are best placed to benefit from growth in Web shopping, UK e-retailing experts say.
Tesco was the latest retailer to report strong Christmas online sales. The company said today that its online business had another record year, delivering over a million orders in the four-week period before Christmas.
Internet sales at health and beauty retailer Boots were up 44% in the third quarter of last year, while Sainsbury's online home delivery service performed strongly with 28% sales growth over the same period.
The Argos Direct home delivery business also produced robust numbers, with Internet business up 37% over Christmas, while mobile phone retailer Carphone Warehouse reported an increase of 40% in online revenues.
But it is the niche market retailers that are seeing online sales soar most dramatically. A Christmas sales poll of 500 UK small and medium-sized retailers, conducted by e-commerce software specialist Actinic, revealed that 80% of respondents enjoyed an average 80% increase in online turnover in November and December 2005.
But not all retailers enjoyed a happy Christmas period, with HMV a high-profile loser in the e-commerce war. Shares in the music retailer took a pounding last week after it posted a drop in Christmas sales, lower profits and said its chief executive was to leave. The company blamed the combined power of online retailers and supermarkets for its flagging fortunes.
Like HMV, bookseller WH Smith has suffered from the continuing rise of online-only giant Amazon. WH Smith has performed something of a turnaround from a torrid 2005 but it mainly comes on the back of a cost-cutting exercise by CEO Kate Swann, who has taken the company back to its core business and made savage cuts to its CD retailing operation.
