Figures published by Hitwise have revealed the true scale of the impact that Black Friday, Cyber Monday and the seven days encompassing these two major events has had on the British retail landscape this year.

Throughout this period a total of 1.5 billion visits to websites offering safe shopping online were catalogued, with 243 million being reported on Black Friday alone.

Cyber Monday was a little less hectic, with 181 million visits carried out by consumers across the UK. And perhaps unsurprisingly, it was the hours of 6pm to 9pm that were found to be the busiest in terms of activity, with people taking advantage of their evening after work to make purchases via safe shopping online.

Interestingly, the study also found that the number of consumers visiting retail sites after encountering a link on social media platforms tended to peak in the early hours of the morning, appealing to night owl shoppers more than any other group.

Forty one per cent of all clicks which were generated during Cyber Week this year came from search engines, showing that they are still essential to the success of e-commerce sites. This also shows that the way in which results are categorised and ranked can be hugely influential in terms of which retailers succeed and fail.

Products related to health and beauty saw the biggest surge in popularity this year, up by 14 per cent, while items designed to boost fitness were also on the rise, with 12 per cent more site visits stimulated by this type of offer.

The two most successful individual retail brands of the week were e-commerce giant, Amazon, and high street titan, Argos, showing that new and old companies alike have an opportunity to capitalise on the rise of online shopping.