Cyber Monday: After Black Friday record, shoppers to do virtual battle for deals

After Black Friday the focus is squarely on the online retailers with £650 million in sales expected

Amazon marks busiest ever online shopping day on Black Friday 2014 ( Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

After the frenzy of Black Friday, the luddites are taking a back seat as Britain’s cyber shoppers prepare for virtual battle to nab the best bargains online.

Cyber Monday is expected to draw in an estimated £650million pounds worth of trade at the click of a mouse, according to The Guardian, with 125 million hits expected across UK retail websites within 24 hours.

Black Friday saw bargain-hunters rush to stores and fight it out - often literally - to grab hold of the limited deals on offer. Not everyone left the house to get profit from the discounts, however, with a sizeable proportion of Britons internet shopping from the comfort of their own homes.

In all, this extended weekend is expected to see £1.5billion spent online.

It looks set to be yet another record-breaking day for online giant Amazon UK, if last year’s pattern is to be repeated.

The retailer experienced its busiest ever shopping day on Black Friday, with more than 5.5million orders made at a rate of 64 per second.

The record smashed that set on Cyber Monday last year, which in turn surpassed figures for Black Friday just three days earlier.

“The public’s appetite for Black Friday has been bigger than ever, kicking off the Christmas shopping period in earnest and establishing Black Friday as a fixture on the UK Christmas shopping calendar.”

A total of 3,000 deals have been available as part of Black Friday, with sales peaking at 8.29am before shoppers made their way to work.

Best-selling items this year included the Kindle Fire HDX 7” range, Dolce Gusto Mini Me Coffee Capsule Machine, Toy Story Ultimate Action Buzz Lightyear, diamond jewellery and men’s watches.

On Cyber Monday, hundreds of “lightning deals” – where limited stock is sold at a discount for a limited time – will be released every ten minutes.

Top deals will include reductions on TomTom Sat Navs, Sennheiser Headphones, the Harry Potter Hogwarts Collection DVD and ruby jewellery.

Get Black Friday discount codes and Cyber Monday deals