Xmas online shopping frenzy begins in earnest

Online shoppers on both sides of the Atlantic have started a festive spending spree as Christmas comes early to the web.

Nielsen NetRatings said the Yuletide season officially started last week in the US after it reported a significant spike in consumer sales.

The web metrics firm said online purchases were up 14 per cent in the week to 11 November. More significantly, e-tail sales in the toy and game market were up 66 per cent from the previous week.

Nielsen added that the holiday shopping season started the same week this year as last and despite fears about the economy is even stronger than in 2000. The company said that this lends more weight to the theory that the net is heading for its strongest year ever.

Meanwhile, transaction security provider CyberSource claims UK shoppers have been buying their festive gifts for at least two weeks already.

Neil Cook, UK MD for CyberSource, said: "There's every indication that this is going to be a bumper year for ecommerce - we're seeing exactly all the same trends as last year."

The e-tailers surveyed by the company said they expect sales this year to top last year's by 17 per cent and claimed sales will increase by over a third in the run-up to the 25th.

Sales over the web in the UK started to grow toward the end of October - earlier than their US counterparts. CyberSource's Cook puts this difference down to UK consumers' deep-grained distrust of the delivery infrastructure to get goods to them in time.

Cook added the continued growth of ecommerce was bringing with it an additional increase in levels of fraud.

He told silicon.com: "Consumers shouldn't worry about this. My only advice to consumers this Christmas is to make sure they use their credit cards, not their debit cards."

Consumers are covered for fraudulent transactions on their credit card, but banks have no obligation to refund money taken off a debit card.