UK: Online spending reaches 8.8 billion pounds in March

Online sales in the UK amounted to 8.8 billion pounds in March 2025, bringing total online spending for the year-to-date to 26.2 billion pounds, new data from Adobe Analytics has revealed.

Spending for the month rose 3.5 percent on the 8.5 billion pounds reported in March 2024, largely driven by increased spending on “warm-weather related items”, the tech firm said. Alongside outdoor furniture and home décor, there was also an uptick in spending on summer clothing, such as for dresses, for which spending rose 23 percent compared to the month prior.

In a release, Vivek Pandya, lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights, said: “March brought a fresh sense of optimism for UK shoppers, with warmer weather and lower prices for essential items encouraging overall growth in online spending. As retailers enter a period of increased operating costs and uncertainty, they will need to find the right balance between protecting their margins and keeping prices low enough to maintain the healthy levels of demand and online spending we’ve seen since the start of the year.”

Adobe also reported an increase in usage of AI-powered services in March. According to its data, traffic to online retail sites that originated from AI and generative AI sources rose 20 percent compared to February, and 790 percent since August 2024. AI assistants were cited as the most popular service to be used, followed by AI research, product recommendations, shopping list creation and gift inspiration.