This month will see a surge in activity in the retail sector as consumers from across the UK rush to get ready for the festive season. Analysts are expecting the online spend to hit £3.2 billion over the course of November, according to the Evening Standard.

This represents an eight per cent increase on the same period of 2014, with retailers having to prepare well in advance to deal with the influx of people looking to buy presents via safe shopping online.

In November last year, the weekly online spend hit £754 million, but it is expected to be closer to £800 million in 2015, boosted significantly thanks to the growing momentum built by the Black Friday shopping event, which has become popular in recent years.

People who tried to carry out safe shopping online during Black Friday of 2014 will remember that many of the biggest retailers in the country were struggling to keep their websites afloat, under the pressure of the traffic. And, no doubt, those companies which were negatively impacted, including Tesco and Argos, will have taken extra precautions this year, to ensure that the same thing does not happen again.

A spokesperson for eBay spoke out about the fact that the auction site had already begun offering discounts in anticipation of the Christmas rush, presumably as a way of spreading out some of the sales across the month, rather than cramming them all into a single 24 hour period.

Following Black Friday, consumers can also look forward to the early arrival of the January sales. These have been creeping into the pre-Christmas period over the past few years, as high street retailers struggle to compete with the mounting popularity of online shopping as a widely used alternative.