Buying gifts online

Our penchant for buying online is growing. A recent survey by eBay found that online firms will account for half of all new retail businesses by 2020, up from its current level of one quarter. It also estimates that by 2020, annual online spending will rise by £46 billion to £67 billion and offline spending will see a decrease of 7% to £247 billion.

It’s not surprising seeing as we can save around 20% compared to buying goods on the high street. It doesn’t look like we are going to buck this trend any time soon either. This Christmas seven in ten of us will do some shopping online and 38% will buy most of their Christmas gifts on the internet.

There are many benefits to buying online, but most are linked to ease and price. You can search through thousands of websites offering the same product to find the cheapest price and if you are not sure what to get Aunt Marjorie or Uncle Burt then you can peruse 10 to 20 websites in the time it would take you to do one round of John Lewis. 

You don’t even have to have the gift delivered to your home to wrap. Many sites actually gift wrap it for you and send it directly to the recipient. Many don’t rely on Royal Mail either, so you don’t need to get hot and bothered worrying about more postal strikes. 

Some well known high street brands also dominate the marketplace online, for example Interflora offer a great selection of roses with next day delivery, and the internet is now much cheaper and convenient than the high street.  You can also save money on parking and travel costs and you won’t have to fight your way through the crowds and snatch up the last copy of that DVD of number one selling toy. You can buy goods from all around the world and actually find benefit from the fact that we live in a globalised world.

Seeing as everyone is rather strapped for cash and the UK is still one of the few leading economies that is still in recession, we should make the most of the huge savings you can find online as well as low interest rates and the lower level of VAT before it goes back to 17.5% in January. So if you want to splurge this year but have less money to do so than the last year, the answer to your problems is to shop online.