ChannelAdvisor polled those who had bought items online in the past six months, which could have caused response rates for shopping digitally to skew higher. Nonetheless, we estimate that online shopping will be a significant trend in 2020, with 45.4 million digital buyers in the UK this year, accounting for 81.1% of the population.
In an August 2020 study by ChannelAdvisor and Dynata, 20% of UK adults who shopped digitally said that since the start of the pandemic, they had purchased a product after seeing an Instagram post or ad for it, up from 17% in May 2020.
According to an August 2020 survey from ChannelAdvisor in collaboration with Dynata, only 44% of UK digital shoppers planned to start their Christmas shopping in either November or December—28% planned to start in October, 14% in September, and another 14% said they’d already started. For the 44% starting late, returns could be a headache for retailers.