Endless queues, jostling crowds, perhaps even a tussle or two; the typical Boxing Day shopping experience hardly resonates with Christmas spirit. This year, however, UK consumers swapped stores for sofas and did their sale shopping from the comfort of their own homes, according to data released today revealing that mobile traffic on Boxing Day was 38 per cent higher than on Cyber Monday, traditionally the biggest day for online shopping.

This data, gathered by global leader of mobile and multichannel technology, Usablenet, supports a report published by Ofcom in December that named UK consumers as the biggest individual online purchasers in the world. The 55 per cent increase in mobile page views registered by Usablenet demonstrates that even more shoppers bypassed car keys and travel cards for tablets and smartphones to shop on their own terms.

Usablenet’s data highlights the different ways that consumers chose to shape their shopping on two of the most important retailing days. Shoppers keen to complete their Christmas shopping on Cyber Monday may have viewed fewer pages, but they made 50 per cent more transactions in their rush to purchase gifts. On Boxing Day, however, shoppers were more likely to be browsing for a bargain, spending a full minute more on sites than in the pre-Christmas period.

Carin van Vuuren, Usablenet’s marketing chief, comments: “Data from Boxing Day and other key shopping days such as Cyber Monday has demonstrated that consumers are fundamentally changing the way they shop. Mobile is now a fully-fledged channel and the best mix of multichannel combines it with in-store platforms to offer customers the widest and most flexible range of shopping choices.”

Whichever mobile device consumers opted to shop on, they started saying goodbye to multi-storey and hello to multichannel.”

This data is calculated from a selection of Usablenet’s client mobile sites, which includes leading retailers such as ASOS, Marks & Spencer, Selfridges, Carphone Warehouse and Topshop.