UK shoppers increased their online spending by 3.7% year-on-year over the extended Christmas trading period (1 November – 31 December). It reached £24.4 billion as thrifty consumers targeted major discounting days Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Boxing Day.

Black Friday saw customers spend a total of £1.04 billion, up 4.1% on 2022, Cyber Monday’s total spend reached £881m, up 7.4%, while Boxing Days sales prompted a £461.8m spend, a 4.4% rise on a year ago.

This brought total online spending in 2023 to £111.2 billion, according to a report by Adobe Digital Insights.

Its data also shows that Britons splashed out £3.3 billion using buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) services over the season, taking the total amount spent in the sector in 2023 to £16.8 billion.

That could have a negative knock-on effect on early 2024 spending as consumers start to pay their BNPL bills.

Analysing hundreds of millions of visits to retail sites from UK shoppers over the festive season and tracking the prices of 100 million SKUs across 18 product categories, it said the most popular products purchased included personal beauty care, fragrances and luggage/handbags.

Vivek Pandya, Lead Analyst, Adobe Digital Insights, said: “After a slow start to 2023 from an online spending perspective, our data shows spend accelerating towards the end of the year, peaking over the holiday period to end the year on a high.”

“Much of this growth is propped up by deep discounting from retailers and growth in the use of BNPL services showing consumers are still keeping a close eye on their finances.”