Cyber-Monday, 6th December to break online shopping records, retailers warned

SOUTHAMPTON. UK, 20th October, 2010: PEER 1 Hosting, the global online business hosting provider, is predicting the biggest ever peak in online shopping this Christmas after survey results show Britons are increasing their festive budgets and plan to buy more gifts online than ever before. ‘Cyber Monday’, which this year will fall on Monday 6th December, is predicted be a peak traffic day, as people log on to kick-start their Christmas shopping.

When surveyed, a staggering 88% of respondents in the United Kingdom said they will spend more online this year than they ever have before. Just over half said they actually found it easier to shop for Christmas gifts online compared to physically going to the shops in one of Britain’s high streets. PEER 1 Hosting has warned many online retailers could be under prepared for the demand on their servers as the survey also showed that almost 40% of people will leave their shopping until December, which will cause huge increases in traffic.

Sites that are ill prepared for high volumes of traffic will fail at this time, likely costing a huge amount of lost revenue. With the potential to purchase goods from various outlets, if one site fails consumers are most likely to purchase the wanted item elsewhere.

“Retailers need to be ready this year for Christmas, and cope with big spikes in activity - slow page loading times or site crashes mean lost customers,” said Dominic Monkhouse, UK MD at PEER 1 Hosting. “It’s business critical for ecommerce sites to continue to perform at their optimum rate at the busiest time of the year, and working with a scalable hosting provider means there’s no need to invest in a lot of extra capacity that won’t be needed for the majority of the year.”

ecommerce sites can visit www.peer1hosting.co.uk for hosting service information or call one of PEER 1 Hosting’s highly trained sales team on 0800 840 7490

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Notes to Editors

* Survey based on 11,037 responses from Smooch.com global members aged between 18 and 105 years.

** Verdict Research, the UK’s leading retail analysts, forecast online sales for Q4 2010 will be 17.6 per cent higher than in Q4 2009, resulting in online shopping accounting for a predicted £8.1bn in the run up to Christmas.