British newspaper The Daily Telegraph reports that the UK is eBay’s fastest growing market; according to the online retail giant.

The company’s Global Marketplaces President, Devin Wenig, told the paper that the number of UK shoppers using the auction site year on year has seen double digit growth, and the eBay UK site now boasts 17 million unique users and 40 million listings.

Wenig also said that the number of customers accessing the site and making purchases through mobile devices was also increasing, and mobile usage now accounted for more than 10% of all UK site traffic. This amounts to eBay item bought every second via a mobile phone.

Online auction retailer eBay is increasing a focus on selling new goods through established retailers and Wenig told the Telegraph that the site was looking to “partner” with mainstream retailers, rather than undermine them, with many working with the auction site to sell off old stock.

Wenig also explained that eBay intends to develop its mobile app further by experimenting with image recognition software to enable users to search a product by taking a photograph of it.

Trading at UK supermarkets showed a modest improvement in growth according to the latest Nielson retailer performance figures.

In the four week period to 4 February 2012, headline value growth at the UK’s grocery multiples was +3.5 per cent, while unit growths were marginally down at -0.2 per cent.

Mike Watkins, the senior manager for retailer services at Nielsen said:  “January was a month of two halves.  It began with shoppers holding back spending after Christmas, seemingly choosing instead to pay down credit cards in the opening weeks.  However, re-stocking picked up later in the month after payday, meaning growth across January was an improvement on last year.   Despite the recent cold snap, sales weren’t held back to the extent they were during the Arctic conditions experienced a year ago.”

In terms of category growth, the star performers were Packaged Grocery and Crisps & Snacks, where value growths in the last four weeks were +7.7% and +6.2% respectively.”

He continued: “Retailers are continuing to support sales with vouchers, coupons and fuel discounts in order to drive footfall and attract repeat visit, as shoppers are motivated by the immediate cash saving.

“With food inflation also slowing, the modest improvement in growths, which are currently back to the levels last seen nine months ago, are encouraging.  But it will be the full quarter trend – to the end of March – that will be more indicative of underlying shopper behaviour in 2012.”

British retailers are slower to introduce mobile shopping than other countries around the world. This is according to a survey by KPMG.

Mobile technology will be crucial in maximising sales over the next two years, say retailers and consumer goods companies, replacing traditional business generation channels such as business intelligence or supply chain management.

The global survey of CFO’s in the retail sector suggested that the importance of mobile technology varied from one nation to the next. According to the KPMG Consumer Markets CFO Survey, 36% of UK respondents view mobile technology as key to maximize sales, compared to 46% in Germany, 44% in the US and 50% in India.

It is believed that the perceived importance of mobile technology in developing countries is due to the lack of access to broadband or traditional stores, and thus more people shopping through smart phones.

Tim Clifford, Partner Consumer Markets at KPMG comments, “Mobile technology will help decide who wins in the retail space. Retailers must embrace mobile technology as an urgent priority or otherwise risk falling behind.

“Mobile technology is dramatically altering the retail experience and changing the relationship between retailers and customers. Success in both developed and emerging markets will depend on the swift adoption of mobile as a device for communicating with customers and for facilitating transactions. Consumer goods and retail companies that are slow to embrace mobile will find themselves struggling to keep up at a time when competition for market share is becoming increasingly fierce.”

Investing in new technologies to drive sales is considered especially important given falling revenue in the retail sector. 47% of UK respondents expect the year’s revenue figures to be lower than last year.

GAME, the videogame and console retailer, has cut forty six jobs from the company’s headquarters in Basingstoke.

The jobs were lost as a result of a restructuring process designed to aid growth of GAME’s multi channel offer. The company intends to ‘better respond to the current video games market’.

These job cuts represent 10% of the Basingstoke site’s headquarters.

A spokesman for GAME said: “The proposed restructure will result in around 46 fewer roles at our central support centre in Basingstoke.  Our proposed new structure will change the way that we operate and will enable us to be significantly more efficient in our relationships with suppliers and customers.

“We are giving our full help and support to the colleagues who are affected by these proposed changes.”

As part of the corporate restructure which has also taken place at GAME, commercial strategy director, Tricia Brennan will now take on the role of chief commercial officer and UK MD Tom Devine will become the firm’s channel director.

Only last week GAME announced new agreements with its lenders to enable it to stock new game releases. The group has also put its internationalbusiness up for sale. The deadline for offers is this coming Friday.

A new Local Data Company report claims that the number of empty shops on UK high streets is set to rise in 2012.

The report forecasts that the number of empty stores will increase and puts this trend down to a number of factors including weak consumer confidence, the growth in online shopping and the expansion of the supermarket sector.

Whilst shop vacancy rates stabilised in 2011 at 14.3%, there are now some 48,000 empty shops on the UK’s various high streets.

This report also highlighted large regional differences in 2011. The best performing centres were found mainly in the South and West, whilst the worst were to be found in the North and Midlands.

The region with the lowest rate of emptying stores was St Albans in the South, with a vacancy rate of 9%, whilst the North West’s town of Stockport had the highest rate at over 30%. Other North West locations with vacancy rates of more than 25% were Blackburn, Blackpool, Grimsby, Nottingham, Stockton, Wolverhampton, and Walsall.

Matthew Hopkinson, director at the Local Data Company, said: “The stable top line rate of 2011 hides the significant breadth in town centre vacancy rates up and down the country. The odds are stacked against a positive take-up of shops and as such the new reality of 48,000 empty shops is here to stay unless an alternative use or purpose can be found.”

Commenting on the figures, Stephen Robertson, director general of the British Retail Consortium said: “The scale of retail failures since Christmas and number of shops standing empty show the effects of high costs and weak demand on retail businesses and the people and places that rely on them.”

French Connection, the fashion brand, has issued a profits warning for the second time in less than three months.

After a less than successful Christmas trading period, the company expects to announce profits for the year to 31 January 2012 as low as £4.7million. This, they expect due to poor trading over the Christmas period.

The first French Connection profits warning occurred just two months ago in November 2011, when the fashion retailer warned that retail sales were running 9.5% lower than November 2010. As a result, retail analysts cut profit forecasts to around £7.8million.

A French Connection statement read: “Trading in our retail stores in UK/Europe was disappointing in the early part of the autumn/winter season and this continued through the Christmas trading period.

“The effect of this has been to negate the growth in like-for-like sales achieved in the first half of the year and to cause the gross margin to be lower than expected.”

There was some good news for French Connection, however, with wholesale deliveries showing growth in the second half of the year, and forward orders for the Spring/Summer Season also improving on the previous year. The company also claim that its international operations and brand licensing partners continued to perform strongly.

The company suffered losses in 2009 and 2010 but returned to profitability last year following a restructur and the sales of its Nicole Farhi brand.

The mobile revolution is in full swing, and a whopping 73% of consumers now access websites on a mobile device, yet just 20% of companies have a mobile optimised site.

An EPiServer study proves that the majority of UK companies are failing to meet consumer expectations for mobile website browsing. The research found that just 20% of companies have a mobile optimised site in place and an incredible 49% of UK consumers experience frustration with the mobile sites already in place.

It wasn’t all bad news, however, with expectations for an increasingly mobile future. According to the study, as many as 76% of marketers say they have a mobile strategy in place, while 26% expect their mobile optimised site to be launched in the next year.

Mobile device usage is soaring, and two thirds of consumers have accessed a mobile app in the past year, but it isn’t all plain sailing and 32% of respondents surveyed said they find mobile websites hard to navigate, 35% admitted that if a mobile website is difficult to use, they will drop off.

Nearly half of the mobile device using population find these applications to be slow and over a third find logging in to be difficult.

Maria Wasing, VP of Marketing Europe & Sales Operations at EPiServer, commented,” Our research clearly highlights the increasing importance of an effective mobile strategy in order to attract new customers and to effectively serve existing ones.

“The number of consumers carrying an internet-enabled device with them at all times is rocketing and, by thinking about the best approach for your brand now, businesses can make the most of the growing mobile opportunity.”

The IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index value reached a record high in December 2011, and figures reveal that online sales recorded during December were up by 16.5% against December 2010.

These figures also show that British Christmas shoppers spent a total of £7.9 billion online during December. This works out as the equivalent of £155 per person. December sales saw an increase against the preceding November of 12.2% and against December 2010 of 16.5%. This goes down as a record index score.

In total, £68 billion was spent online in 2011, which is also a 16% increase on the previous year. The clothing sector experienced growth despite a year on year slowdown, and sales were recorded as being up by 12%, compared with 40.5%.

The index’s forecast for 2012 featured 13% growth and approximately £77 billion in total e-retail sales.

Figures show that online retailers had a successful Christmas, mirroring the success of the high street in Christmas sales with 2.2% growth reported by the British Retail Consortium.

E-retail now accounts for 17% of the total UK retail market and the percentage is likely to increase further given the rise of mobile commerce and the huge numbers of tablet computers purchased in the year 2011.

Chris Webster, head of retail consulting and technology at Capgemini says: “Strong online sales over Christmas were even more impressive since they built on a 25% year on year growth from 2009 to 2010.. During 2011 we saw continued pressure on sales as shoppers became savvier in looking for bargains and this continued in the run up to Christmas. The rapid rise of mobile in 2011 will continue into 2012 as consumers became familiar with shopping via tablet devices and smartphonest, some taking advantage of their recent Christmas presents. This changing landscape will open up a myriad of opportunity for retailers including the integration of stores into the multi-channel world and the potential of new capabilities like location based markerting services.”

While Christmas sales were better than forecast, there was no end to the decline of the retail industry in the final quarter of 2011, according to the experts at the Retail Think Tank.

After meeting in January, the KPMG/Ipsos Retail Think Tank (RTT) reached the conclusion that the deterioration in retail health which plagued 2011 continued throughout the fourth quarter. The Retail Health Index (RHI) continued to drop, falling 2 points to 80 in the quarter. This marks the fourth quarter in a row in which the RHI has fallen.

While retailers attempted to kick start demand by slashing prices and increasing the number of unplanned in store promotions, they did so at a cost to margins and profits.

Alarmingly, these costs are impacting negatively on the health of the retail industry for the first time since the third quarter of 2008, at the height of the financial crisis. This illustrates the effect of increased investment in servicing multi-channel operations over the Christmas period.

The majority of RTT members agree to a worrying prediction that the rate of decline in retail health will not slow down in the first quarter of 2012 and the RHI will continue to drop, a further 3 points to 77. This would mark the lowest ebb in retail health since the RTT was established in 2006; and would create a downward momentum not seen since the early stages of 2009.

Helen Dickinson, KPMG, commented, “As we predicted three months ago Christmas was not experienced at full price. Retailers fought hard to get ‘their share’ by matching or exceeding competitors’ offers. This of course impacted margins significantly although it did drive a late uplift in demand in December, with some retailers doing significantly better than others.  However, there were many other austerity factors acting to hold it down across October and November. These included a depressing Autumn Statement from the Chancellor; high petrol, diesel and home energy costs; rising unemployment; public-sector strikes over pension changes; the Euro crisis and even the unseasonably mild weather at the start of the quarter.”

Retail analyst Nick Bubb commented, “Retailers who undertook reactive and unplanned discounting in quarter 4 effectively saved Christmas – so far as their balance sheets are concerned. But once you train consumers to expect deep discounts you make a rod for your own back when you attempt to increase margins again. Sadly, many of the best-performing retailers of the 80’s, 90’s and 00’s have continually downgraded their brands; losing brand equity as well as market share. Right now very nearly the only thing propping up demand is the illusion created by food price inflation, and that’s no comfort at all”.

Alliance Boots experienced a revenue increase of 14.1% in the last quarter of 2011, for their group, when compared with the same quarter of 2010.

The health and beauty division of the group, namely the Boots pharmacy chain shared success and enjoyed a 4.1% rise in revenue over the Christmas period; namely the five weeks ending 31 December 2011; as compared with that period in 2010.

Boots UK like-for-like dispensing volumes increased by 1.2% in the quarter while like-for-like retail revenue grew 0.6%.

Alliance Boots reported that total revenue in the quarter for all of its health and beauty division business, including Boots Opticians and non-UK health and beauty businesses, was flat when compared with the same quarter in 2010; but the group expects to deliver profit growth through gross margin management and tight cost controls.

The group is believed to be on track for success in reaching their 2011/12 targets, both financial and operational.

Executive chairman Stefano Pessina said in a statement: “Looking to 2012, we expect the economic environment to remain tough with continuing pressure on both consumer and governmental expenditure.  This will generate challenges but also new opportunities for us as we pursue our growth, organically and through further international expansion.”

He added: “I am as confident as ever that Alliance Boots will deliver another year of double digit trading profit growth for our financial year ending 31 March 2012.”