While the retail market has showed signs of decline recently, sales online have gone from strength to strength, proving just how important an e-commerce page is to businesses.
If you are a small enterprise and do not already have facilities for customers to purchase goods online, the latest figures from the Office of National Statistics might encourage you to consider a website redesign.
This is because the recent Retail Sales report found online transactions accounted for 17.4 per cent of all retailing in March 2018. This is an increase from 15.9 per cent 12 months earlier, demonstrating the rising popularity of internet shopping.
Rhian Murphy, senior statistician at the ONS, suggested the inclement weather could have affected the way people shop over the last few months, saying: “The snow actually helped boost online spending, with department stores, in particular, seeing growth in their web sales.”
While online sales for department stores reached 17.1 per cent last month, 16.2 per cent of online sales were for textiles, clothing and footwear stores and 5.4 per cent were for food purchases.
These findings compound the British Retail Consortium’s recent report on footfall traffic at shopping centres.
It revealed footfall declined by six per cent between March 2017 and 2018, which is the sharpest drop since the end of 2010.
Helen Dickinson OBE, chief executive of BRC, suggested the bad weather we have experienced this year could have dissuaded shoppers from buying in store. Therefore, more and more are turning to websites for their retail needs.
If you need some help with web design in Surrey, contact us to find out how we can be of assistance.
