UK internet shoppers are poised to spend a total of £537m - or £22.4m an hour - online, on what is predicted to be the busiest internet shopping day of the year.

Total spending on Monday 29 November - dubbed Manic Monday - is forecast to peak at 29% more than last year according to new research carried out for the online shopping comparison website Kelkoo by the Centre for Retail Research (CRR), which surveyed 50 major retailers.

Overall online Christmas sales this year are expected to rise by 28.8% (£2.6bn) to £11.5bn - equivalent to 17p for every pound spent during the festive period, and reinforcing the importance of the online sector in driving retail growth.

That's a huge opportunity for online retailers to make significant sales and make a real impact on the bottom line.  However, it's also an opportunity to screw things up.

With the pressure to sort out Christmas presents and find the best deals online shoppers are likely to be even less tolerant of poor quality and poor performance.  Anything that reduces the online experience and adds any level of frustration to the already pressured situation will have people leaving sites in droves.

Now's the time for online retailers to make sure that the online experience of every visitor to their sites is as good as it possibly can be.

For those retailers with Bricks as well as Clicks sites the busiest day on the high street is set to be Saturday 18 December, when 10 million consumers hit the shops in a last-minute dash to buy Christmas gifts, at a total cost of £1.1bn, or £764,000 per minute.

Overall, Christmas sales are expected to reach £68.7bn, an increase of 1.3% or £862m compared with 2009.

Extracts from http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2010/nov/17/internet-sales-manic-monday