A new survey, conducted by WiPro Digital, has revealed that almost two thirds of consumers in the UK will be making the majority of their pre-Christmas purchases via safe shopping online, with the main motivation for this being the convenience of e-commerce services, according to The Drum.

This is up from the 50 per cent of people who conducted the majority of their festive shopping online last year, indicating that web-based retail is still gaining traction across Britain.

While price is obviously an important incentive to shop online, this is not the biggest reason to do so. Instead, e-commerce sites have managed to improve to the point that people find them far more convenient to use than high street outlets, even if the rise of click & collect has meant that both online and in-store shopping are becoming more closely related.

When it comes to the reasons that people avoid bricks and mortar outlets, the expense and annoyance of having to find a parking space to visit high streets and out of town retail centres are both driving consumers to use sites that offer safe shopping online instead.

Report spokesperson, Avinahs Rao, explained that although high street chains were trying harder to match the web when it comes to price, this is only a small facet of the uphill struggle they face, in order to remain relevant in the modern world.

Another interesting fact revealed by the study is that just five per cent of UK consumers will be indulging in what is known as ‘showrooming,’ that is heading to a high street store to check out a product in person, before returning home to buy it online.

Perhaps this shows that the symbiotic relationship between online and in-store retail is growing, rather than being diminished.