Black Friday online spending surges as consumers shun high street

It was a slow start to the Black Friday promotional push for UK retailers after the expected early stampede for bargains failed to materialise.

Security and shop staff had outnumbered customers at many stores in the morning as shoppers opted to make their purchases online rather than venturing out in the rain.

The Currys and PC World chains, owned by Dixons Carphone, said website traffic on Thursday had been almost as high as Boxing Day last year. Currys added that it was its biggest ever start to Black Friday, with 7m visitors to its site this week. On Friday afternoon, it said the number of visitors to its site was up 70 per cent. Rival electricals retailer AO.com said that by 9am, sales were already double those at the same time on Black Friday last year.

The surge in online demand meant many sites struggled to cope.

Argos, owned by Home Retail Group, confirmed it had experienced delays on its site after “extremely high levels of visits”. However, it insisted that the site had not crashed — unlike earlier in the week. John Lewis said on Friday some of its customers were also experiencing delays on its site after “record levels of demand”.

Springboard, a retail data consultancy, said shopper numbers were down 6.5 per cent in stores across the country from 8am until midday on Friday, compared with last year. Retail parks were the biggest losers, with numbers down 8.9 per cent, followed by high streets, down 6.5 per cent, and shopping centres down, 4.6 per cent.

In contrast, data from PCA Predict, an address lookup service, showed online activity was up 28 per cent by 2pm.

“There has been a bit of a change in the way that shoppers are looking at Black Friday. They are still shopping, but they are shopping online. A lot of retailers have pushed them away from their stores to websites,” said Diane Wehrle, insights director at Springboard.

However, she predicted that the number of customers visiting stores would rise over the next few days as people collected products they had ordered online.

After a public backlash last year over late consignments, parcel carrier Yodel had called on stores to tone down promises of next-day deliveries and agree maximum item volumes more strictly in advance.

“Lots of our retailers have cancelled early trailers [lorries that pick up goods],” said Dick Stead, chief executive of Yodel. “Retailers have been incredibly sensible saying it isn’t a one-off . . . so the volumes of parcels may come but spread over a longer period.”

Asda — the UK arm of Walmart — and previously one of the biggest proponents of Black Friday, had spurned the event deterred by the scenes of mayhem witnessed in some of its stores last year.

Tesco said operations had run smoothly. The chain did not open its 250 largest stores until 5am on Friday, rather than midnight as it did last year, to allow staff more time to prepare.

“Brent Cross is a promotional activities market, our sales are driven by discount . . . but traffic on the way in has been nothing like usual — much quieter,” she said. “Because a lot of shops have had offers for a week before, I don’t think Black Friday is going to have quite the same punch this year.”

At Brent Cross shopping centre in north London, Francesca Elliott, manager at clothing chain Hobbs, said the staff car park was full as retailers brought in extra workers to cope with the anticipated rush.

Marks and Spencer ran a 20 per cent off deal in stores last weekend, although it was also running promotions to coincide with Black Friday, including £100 off a much-hyped 1970s style suede skirt.

However, Richard Hyman, an independent analyst who runs the Richard Talks Retail website, estimated that 74 per cent of retailers ran Black Friday promotions on Friday, compared with 44 per cent of high street retailers by Thursday night, and 14 per cent on Tuesday.

“I think quite a few [retailers] are going to opt out,” said Mr Hyman. The rainy weather would not help shopper numbers either, he added.