Report reveals slowdown in online sales growth in Ireland
A report has revealed a slowdown of growth in online sales in Ireland in August.
The results are in Retail Excellence's August Dashboard Report for online sales trends in Ireland released today.
The Report from the retail representative body found that desktop year on year sales increased by 5.59%, mobile sales increased by 6.58% and tablet sales increased by 10.94% for the same period.
eCommerce Manager for Retail Excellence, David Campbell, said: "Our August Dashboard Report records a slowdown in terms of online sales for the month when compared to the double digit growth recorded for previous months in 2017.
"This slowdown in online sales is indicative of the usual patterns over this period where families traditionally embark on their annual holidays and are retaining their spend for the purposes of funding back to school costs. So, discretionary spend is lower which is usually associated with online purchases.
"That said, Pharmacy performed best with 1.60 recorded across tablet devices. Monthly trends this year indicate this sector is the strongest performing retail sector online.
"Despite the slowdown recorded in August, we do expect the percentage increase in sales to ratchet up considerably in the run in to Black Friday and Cyber Monday next month.
"Right now, many of our member retailers are busy finalising their digital campaigns for Christmas and are currently stress testing website servers to ensure they can handle increased traffic and that their logistics partners are equipped to cater for the expected excess demand."
