Certain times of the year are always a blessing for retailers. Christmas, Halloween, Easter; all are good news for those retailers who may still be reeling from the effects of the recent recession. During these peak periods, consumers swarm into bricks-and-mortar stores and onto retail websites to do some safe shopping online, buying gifts for friends and family. And each year, the celebrations seem to increase in scale with consumers spending more on these seasonal items.

The results of the latest reports on shopping trends do nothing to challenge this perception, with recently announced findings from the British Retail Consortium and KPMG showing that this year's Easter was a good holiday period for online retailers in general. Statistics indicate that non-food, non-store sales, a grouping which includes those purchases made by consumers when safe shopping online, are actually up 16 per cent compared with the same period in the year 2009, with the amounts spent also being a fair bit higher than in the months leading up to March. So it seems that plenty of shoppers headed online to buy Easter greetings cards and other items, which have helped online retailers drive revenues over the holiday.

The report mentioned that whilst online sales were looking good, it should be noted that consumers were busy cashing in plenty of money-off vouchers and taking advantage of promotions and discounts that may have helped significantly in driving the increase in sales over last year's totals. Whilst the figures may have risen, the recession is still fresh in people's minds, with the result that clothing and footwear sales are being adversely affected, as consumers carefully control their spending in case of another downturn. The report did, however, reveal that sales of homewares are on the up which is good news for retailers in this category.