Nearly 4 million Britons shopped online on Xmas Day

LONDON (Reuters) - Nearly 4 million Britons bought goods online on Christmas Day, spending 102 million pounds ($154 million),or 21 percent more than on the same day last year, Internet retail industry body IMRG said in a report on Thursday.

The number of people shopping -- 3.8 million -- was down 14 percent on 2007, however, signaling online retailing is not immune to the economic downturn.

But the volume of transactions was 26 percent higher, "indicating that serious bargain hunting was the order of the day," IMRG Chief Executive James Roper said in a statement.

Retailers conducting sales on Christmas Day included Marks & Spencer, John Lewis and Debenhams.

Separate data from online digital research experts eDigitalResearch showed Britons left gift shopping late and were monitoring sites for the best deals right up to Christmas Day, with traffic up from 2007 on December 22, 23 and 24.

Traffic leapt almost 100 percent between Christmas Day and Boxing Day, which was the busiest single day for online retailers in 2008, as shoppers looked to bag the best bargains from clearance sales without having to queue in the cold.

(Reporting by Mark Potter, editing by Will Waterman)