May sees best online shopping growth since 2010, research shows

Online shopping saw a double-digit surge in the UK last month, according to new data.

E-retail sales were up 19.4% year on year in May – the month’s highest increase since 2010.

The figure, which also marks the UK’s strongest month for internet-based shopping since November 2016, was highlighted in the latest IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index.

Several big events could have contributed to the increase, including the FA Cup Final and royal wedding, both bookended by bank holidays and taking place against a backdrop of scorching temperatures.

Footwear and garden saw the highest rates of year-on-year growth, achieving surges of 54.4% and 40.2% respectively. Health and beauty also exhibited strong growth, at 23%.

Bhavesh Unadkat, principal consultant in retail customer engagement at professional services giant Capgemini, said of the findings: “May is typically a strong month for retail and that was borne out in the results on both sides of the coin.

“UK sunshine over-indexed in May, coming in 18% higher than the last two years – and temperatures have also resumed after the much colder start to 2018.”

He continued: “This has clearly created big wins in the seasonal categories such as garden and footwear but there is also a certain degree of optimism felt throughout the sectors driven by the royal wedding and the FIFA World Cup.

Andy Mulcahy, strategy and insight director at e-retail industry association IMRG, commented: “There is nothing new in online taking a greater share of sales of course, the question is what happens to physical retail. Traditional shops won’t vanish entirely – there will always be some level of demand for them – but how high streets and other retail spaces evolve more generally in response to lower shopper interest is a matter for some debate.”

“Many speak about focusing on in-store ‘experience’ but in many cases the solutions don’t seem to be very different from what was there before. It seems likely that retail is in for a rocky period of readjustment, that might take several years, before blueprints for a successful physical retail space become more apparent.”