Lady LUX

Americans just call it the day after Christmas, but in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, the biggest shopping day of the year is known as Boxing Day.

It’s never been a surprise to see the shops packed after the Christmas, but The Telegraph reports that the total of U.K. online shoppers hit record numbers over the weekend. Around 5 million people shopped at online retailers in the U.K., such as Marks & Spencer and Tesco, raking in approximately £153 million (around US$236 million).

In the U.K., Sunday trading laws only allow shops to be open six hours; therefore, the estimated lines were even longer on Dec. 26.

The newspaper reported that the most popular searches in the U.K. during shopping holiday were “next sale” and “debenhams sale.” Although Amazon.com and eBay topped the lists of visited sites, British department stores such as Top Shop and Next saw spikes in their Internet purchases as well.

“People are just looking to get the bargains as quickly as they can. If that means going online on Christmas Day to research, that is what they do,” Robin Goad, research director at Experian Hitwise, told the newspaper.

A representative from the British department store John Lewis told the paper that their online sales were up 42 percent from the same date last year. In fact, four of the store’s items were sold every second.

The most popular items to browse were the Amazon Kindle, iPad and iPhone, and iTunes reported a surge in traffic due to the number of people that received Apple electronics for Christmas.

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