Online shopping sales across the main Christmas period this year are expected to total £890m, with 45 million hours spent browsing sites over the main festive days.
Christmas day sales online are set to top £350m, with Boxing day exceeding £540m as shoppers 'multi-screen' whilst they watch festive films and television, according to a new report.

The Quarterly Benchmarking survey by IMRG (Interactive Media in Retail Group) points out that visits to retailers' websites via mobile devices now account for a massive 38% of total visits, up 58% on the same period last year; the company said this demonstrates that tablets and smartphones are changing the way we shop.

IMRG chief operating officer Andrew McClelland said: "Online always used to be mutually exclusive and not always consistent with the high street. Smartphones, accounting for 20% of mobile-enabled sales on retailers' websites, really are helping customers shop whilst on the move. Tablets are also accelerating this mobile change, lowering the barriers to entry, with prices continuing to fall, their design and interfaces being less intimidating and truly being 'always on' so we, as shoppers can now truly shop whenever and wherever we want."

Meanwhile, data from information services group Experian showed that UK shoppers are set to spend 45 million hours shopping online over Christmas eve, Christmas day and Boxing day this year. The company expects December to be a record-breaking month, with consumers making 117 million visits to retail websites on Christmas day and 118 million visits on Boxing day.

In addition, the firm says the UK is on course to make over three billion visits to retail websites in December 2013, the first time this will ever have happened in a single month.

Digital insight manager for Experian Marketing Services, James Murray, said: "Christmas 2013 has consistently outperformed 2012 on virtually every single shopping day this December, with online visits from Christmas Eve through to Boxing Day up from last year, a record breaking Cyber Monday and the emergence of the even busier Middle Cyber Monday."