UK consumers spent £26.2 billion online in Q1 and £8.8 billion in March alone, the latter figure being a 3.5% increase year on year that included a spending boom for summer dresses.
That’s according to data from Adobe Analytics, which said that high temperatures and low prices fuelled the sales growth.
The data is based on actual online transactions from tracking hundreds of millions of visits to retail sites by UK consumers every month. It also monitors the online prices of 100 million SKUs across 18 product categories.
With the UK enjoying the sunniest March on record, consumers started spending on warm-weather related items such as outdoor furniture earlier than usual, heading online to find the best deals.
In fact, online spending on outdoor furniture in March was up 86% compared to February. While the assumption would be that every year early spring spending on outdoor goods would increase compared to that in late winter, to highlight just how different March 2025 was, such spending rose ‘only’ 56% in March 2024.
Shoppers were also spending more on home décor and summer clothing, such as dresses, compared to previous years.
Home décor spending was up 21% on February’s figures, compared with just an 8% increase over the same period in 2024, while spending on dresses in March this year boomed by 23% on February’s figures, compared to just a 4% increase in 2024.
Mother’s Day, which fell almost three weeks later this year compared with 2024, also contributed to increased sales of flowers, hampers, and related gifts. Compared with February, online spending on popular Mother’s Day gift items increased by 18% on February’s figures, a 29% swing on 2024’s figures, which saw spending decline by 11% over the same period. Gift cards were another favourite, with sales jumping 36% compared to February, outpacing last year’s increase of 20% during the same period.
As mentioned, low prices were a key driver as well as sunny weather and Adobe said that overall, online prices for essential items fell by 1.5% compared to February, easing the pressure on shopper’s budgets. Plenty of food and drink prices were down and personal care product prices dropped 2.6% from February.
“March brought a fresh sense of optimism for UK shoppers, with warmer weather and lower prices for essential items encouraging overall growth in online spending,” said Vivek Pandya, lead analyst, Adobe Digital Insights. “As retailers enter a period of increased operating costs and uncertainty, they will need to find the right balance between protecting their margins and keeping prices low enough to maintain the healthy levels of demand and online spending we’ve seen since the start of the year.”
It’s interesting too that Adobe said UK consumers continued to make use of AI services for shopping in March. The data found that traffic to online retail sites originating from AI and generative AI sources grew by 20% compared with February and they were up 790% since August 2024.
A survey of 2,000 UK consumers commissioned by Adobe in February found that more than a third (35%) have used AI assistants when shopping online, for research (46%), sourcing product recommendations (44%), creating shopping lists (38%), gift inspiration (37%) and finding the best prices for products (29%).
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