Adobe Analytics research: good start to year for UK online retailers with three straight months of YoY growth

New data from Adobe reveals that UK online spending reached £8.5 billion in March 2024, representing a 3.7% increase on the £8.2 billion spent in March 2023. This follows YoY growth of 5% in February and 1.5% in January, indicating consumer confidence and online spending power returning in the first quarter of 2024.

UK retailers felt the benefit of Mother’s Day, an early Easter and the additional weekend in March.

They will also hope to tap into increases to universal credit and child benefit, cuts to National Insurance and lower caps on energy prices.

The Adobe Digital Insights team used Adobe Analytics to analyse hundreds of millions of visits to retail sites from UK consumers in March, tracking 100 million stock keeping units (SKUs) across 18 product categories.

British consumers used buy now pay later services to finance £1.35 billion worth of online purchases in March 2024, up 8% YoY, and representing for 15.9% of total online spending for the month. 

The total spent using BNPL offerings reached £3.95 billion in the first quarter of 2024, up from £3.62 billion in Q1 of 2023. 

Good Friday spending rose 8% to £249.3 million this year, as consumers across the country took advantage of deals for the bank holiday weekend.    

The data also revealed a 2.2% increase in online grocery prices when compared with March 2023, and a 0.7% increase on figures from February 2024.  

Vivek Pandya, Lead Analyst, Adobe Digital Insights at Adobe, comments: “It’s been a good start to the year for online retail with three straight months of year-on-year growth.”

“Retailers will be hopeful that the cuts to national insurance, energy price caps and increases to universal credit and child benefit will further bolster consumer confidence and take spending power to new heights in the coming months.”