UK consumers have been found to be spending nearly £13bn online within the first three months of this year, which boils down to £213 for every person in the country. If the figures are compared to the first quarter of 2007, the online spend shows a whopping 50 per cent rise. These are the trends evident from the latest IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index report.

An enormous £850m was spent online only in the week of the Easter holidays alone. The year-on-year online shopping figures for the month of March show huge increases in beer and wine as well as spirits’ purchases at the rate of twenty eight per cent. Clothing, footwear and other accessories also showed an increase of 31 per cent, when compared with the same period last year. The electrical sector registered a growth of 6.8 per cent year-on-year in March.

It was believed that people might be spending more time at home owing to the extremely cold weather, and as a result, they were spending more time online. Shoppers otherwise have become more comfortable buying over the Internet. One reason may be that they feel more relaxed when buying from the comforts of their home. They perhaps feel that they can decide better on what they should spend on and how much.