While Black Friday may be one of the biggest days for safe shopping online of the year in the UK and the US, over in China it is a very different event which has helped to convince consumers to indulge in some extraordinary e-commerce spending.

The Daily Mail reports that Singles Day, which took place on the 11th of November this year, saw more money spent online in a single 24 hour period than at any other point in the past.

It is thought that around 760 million orders were placed in total on the day, which originally began in the early 1990s as an alternative to Valentine’s Day, aimed at single people rather than those in couples.

As well as bolstering sales via safe shopping online, Singles Day receives plenty of coverage on Chinese television channels, with international celebrities, including David and Victoria Beckham, getting involved in the promotional efforts this year.

Viewers were also treated to a running commentary on just how much money was being spent over the course of the event, with in excess of 2,000 purchases made each and every second.

To cater to the hundreds of millions of customers taking advantage of the event, tens of thousands of retailers were involved, along with millions of couriers.

British retailers like Topshop have latched onto Singles Day in recent years, harnessing it to deliver a dramatic boost to their online sales and help increase the awareness of their brand in China.

In fact, this marketplace is becoming increasingly important to international outlets, since a growing middle class population is helping to fuel the increase in e-commerce spending power, with web-based retail activities tending to outshine bricks and mortar by a significant margin in terms of sales growth at the moment.