Boxing Day sales to start on Christmas Eve – online

Some of the high street's biggest retailers will launch their seasonal sales online on Christmas Eve rather than Boxing Day to take advantage of the millions of people expected to shop online on Christmas Day.

The internet means stores no longer close for Christmas: John Lewis, Marks & Spencer, Currys, PC World and Comet are among those expected to give online customers a head start on the Boxing Day hordes.

IMRG, the internet trade body, expects Britons to spend more than £550m online on Christmas Day and Boxing Day, a 12% increase on 2010. The growing ownership of tablet computers and smartphones has given a further boost to online shopping. For chains such as Argos, HMV and Game, Christmas is the time when they bank the lion's share of their annual profits.

But the backdrop of rising unemployment and falling living standards has proved to be a toxic cocktail this year with lacklustre demand forcing a wave of early discounting. The winter sales will be the last chance for many store groups to make up lost ground before another year of belt-tightening.

Retailers are still sitting on a substantial amount of unsold stock. "The sales will be just as important as ever," said a Verdict retail analyst, Maureen Hinton. "They are vital for clearing stock. It has been challenging this year for retailers because [profit] margins have been under so much pressure."

Most retailers will launch internet sales as soon as their high street shops close their doors on Christmas Eve. John Lewis will start its internet sale at 5pm, even though its department stores do not reopen until the 27th. The employee-owned group is one of the few retailers that does not open on Boxing Day.

Hinton said many people would surf the net as research but still brave the high street on Boxing Day. "People still like to venture out to the sales and will be looking at websites to see what bargains there are and where they are."

Tesco is opening a record 2,000 shops on Boxing Day. Kari Daniels, marketing director for general merchandise, said: "Despite these tough times many families will still want to shop the Boxing Day and January sales."

The biggest crowd-pullers in the Tesco sales are expected to be electrical goods such as Dyson Ball upright vacuum cleaners, reduced from £340 to £199, and Candy washing machines, down from £290 to £180.

Church leaders and family charities complain about the UK's 24/7 shopping culture, but IMRG's David Smith said: "Although shopping on Christmas Day might not appear to quite be in the Christmas spirit, many of these sales could actually be associated with gifts people have received, such as downloadable content for MP3 players and Kindles."

In what was expected to be the busiest shopping day of the year, millions of pounds of sales were anticipated on Friday as last minute shoppers hit the high street. Some stores stayed open until 11pm to squeeze the most out of the pre-Christmas rush.

London's West End was heaving and hectic scenes were reported across Oxford Street, Regent Street and Bond Street. A spokesman for the New West End Company, which represents 600 retailers, said it was even busier than anticipated, adding that about 70% of the shoppers appeared to be men who had left their gift-buying to the 11th hour.

"We expect one million shoppers today and tomorrow through the West End store," he said.

There were queues outside John Lewis, Hamleys and Marks & Spencer before doors opened, with many keen to beat the crowds.

Thousands of shoppers were also expected to descend on Manchester's Trafford Centre, where more than 600 buses have been arriving every day from all over the north of England.

At Bluewater shopping centre in Kent, total footfall between 20 and 23 December was expected to be around 750,000.