Black Friday set to break record for biggest ever online shopping day

Shoppers took precautions and chose to go online instead

consumers would rather Research shows shoppers would rather queue to buy a product on a website than have the website completely crash (Getty Images)

Black Friday is set to break records to become the biggest ever online shopping day.

Analysts have said that the day is on track to break £1 billion in spending online.

This year sales are expected to clock in at £1.07 billion, up 32 per cent on last year's £810 million spend. That's equivalent to online stores taking £1.15 million a minute.

Many stores took extra precautions, like cutting staff discounts online, hiring extra staff, closing stores ahead of time and turning away customers not taking part in Black Friday.

But high streets were eerily quiet on the day as shoppers took precautions and chose to go online instead.

Oxford Circus on Black Friday morning (Ryan Ramgobin)

Argos said nearly 700 of our 840 stores opened at 6am and were "getting busier as the day progresses".

Meanwhile the Argos website had seen 6.5 million visitors by mid-afternoon. Argos chose to operate a queuing system to let people wait to make their purchases, rather than turn them away.

Other retailers took the same approach. JD Sports was one of several websites using a queuing system to ensure they stayed online.

"We’ve also seen Toys R Us able to stay online and trading thanks to the use of a queue. TrafficDefender recently conducted research which revealed that 86 per cent of consumers would rather queue to buy a product on a website than have the website completely crash," Jeremy Gidlow, CEO of Intechnica, said.

Online store The Hut Group said that it had experienced its busiest shopping day ever, with over 300 per cent more traffic than last year and five times more traffic than on a normal Friday.

The River Island and John Lewis websites were struggling to cope.

“Many shoppers this year have opted to stay indoors and away from the havoc that happened in stores during last year’s Black Friday sales. As a result, most retailers have witnessed an unusually large surge in online traffic as consumers shop online," Gidlow said.

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