Adobe Digital Insights: UK consumers spent £111.2 billion online in 2023, as holiday discounts saw spending hit £24.4 billion in last two months of the year

For retailers, the last few months of the year are critical to annual revenues.

This ‘golden quarter’ – which includes the Christmas period as well as major shopping days like Black Friday and Cyber Monday – can make or break businesses, whose performance in November and December can be the difference between ending the year in the red or the black.

Today, new data from the Adobe Digital Economy Index, powered by Adobe Analytics, reveals just how much UK shoppers spent online in 2023 and during the holiday season in particular.

2023 was a year of mixed fortunes for retailers. Online spending in the early months of the year was constrained by high inflation and rising costs of living putting household incomes under pressure, before recovering in the summer months as retailers lowered prices online to stimulate demand. As the year drew to a close, a mix of deeper discounts, increased use of Buy Now Pay Later and flash sales over Black Friday and Cyber Monday stimulated spending, closing the year on a high.

Adobe’s data – based on hundreds-of-millions of visits to retail sites from UK consumers – revealed £11.2 billion was spent online in the final month of 2023, up 1.5% compared with December 2022. £1.6 billion of this was spent using Buy Now Pay Later services (+3.7% YoY), the most spent in a single month in the UK.

UK shoppers spent £24.4 billion over the holiday season from November 1st to December 31st, (up 3.7% YoY), bringing online spending for the year up to £111.2 billion, a 1.3% decrease on the total spent online in 2022 (£112.7 billion).

Holiday Sales Supercharged Spending

As we predicted in our pre-holiday season forecast, the highest spending days of 2023 were the seasonal shopping events of Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Boxing Day.

The deepest discounts this year fell on Cyber Monday in TVs (19% cheaper), computers (24% cheaper), apparel (17% cheaper) and toys (16% cheaper), resulting in online sales totalling £881m - 7.4% higher than last year’s Cyber Monday. The other major discount days, Black Friday and Boxing Day saw their online sales rise by 4.1% YoY to £1.04 billion, and 4.4% YoY to £461.8 million, respectively.

Among the most popular products sold online during this period, were: Cookware sets and small kitchen appliances, personal care products like face creams and lotions, jewellery, puzzles and card games, Jellycat stuffed toys, micro scooters, Bluetooth headphones, smart home items, travel and handbags, coffee machines, perfumes and video games and consoles.

Bah, Humbug! No More

This year, Londoners were in the Christmas spirit, spending more than the average Brit in the last two months of the year. The nations’ capital saw a total of £3.5 billion spent online during the holiday season – up 5.8% YoY. The highest spending days for London were Black Friday (£251 million, +4.6% YoY), Cyber Monday (£158 million, +8.6% YoY), and Boxing Day (£64 million, +9.3% YoY).

Brits Buy Now, Pay Later

Adobe’s data also shows that 2023 was a year where Buy Now, Pay Later became a mainstream method of paying for goods online, as Brits increasingly turned to these services to help manage their finances and spread the cost of payments. Some £16.8 billion of online spending was financed through Buy Now Pay Later services in 2023, equivalent to 15% of online spending, or £1 in every £7 spent online. Buy Now Pay Later spend is up 12.8% on 2022.

£3.3 billion of that spending occurred over the holiday season, accounting for 13.5% of total online spending during the period (up 12.7% YoY on the previous year).

This year, the highest spending days for BNPL usage mapped closely to the biggest spending days, with Black Friday (£101 million, +4.7% YoY), Cyber Monday (£148 million, +17.6% YoY), and Boxing Day (£54 million, +10% YoY) seeing the most spending on these services.

While overall online spending in 2023 declined by 1.3%, the latter part of the year and holiday period saw spending accelerate beyond 2022 levels. Retailers will hope that the momentum in consumer spending power will continue into the early months of 2024 and beyond. The Adobe Digital Insights team will share regular insights and intelligence from the Digital Economy Index - the most comprehensive analysis of online shopping in the UK - throughout 2024. Our most recent data can be found here.