Some 4.4 million UK people bought goods online on Christmas Day 2007, spending £84m and marking a 269 per cent increase on last year, new research reveals.

The estimate from market research firm IMRG works out as an average of £19.09 per shopper.

"The only way we Brits can enjoy the nation's favourite leisure activity - shopping - on Christmas Day is online, so it is hardly surprising that millions of us now do a spot of Yuletide bargain hunting," said James Roper, chief executive at IMRG.

"People flock to online shops later in the day than usual on Christmas Day, generally after the Queen's Speech, and the main action happens between 8pm and 10pm. But the e-tills keep ringing right up till midnight."

DeVere Forster, director of Dixons UK, added: "In the period before Christmas we noticed a new phenomenon in buying patterns which we called 'e-camping'.

"Thousands of keen buyers mimicked the tradition of camping outside bricks and mortar stores, signing up for email alerts to secure products with limited supply, such as the Nintendo Wii, as new stock arrived on our site.

"Traditional British behaviour patterns do not apply online. The door to our store is wide open and customers who secure the stock are those who click their mouse milliseconds more quickly than their virtual queuing neighbours."

Forster noted that popular products on Christmas Day included TVs, mobile phones, digital cameras, MP3 players, digital photo frames, washing machines, tumble driers, fridges and freezers.

John Bevan, UK managing director of Lastminute.com, said: "Christmas Day has become a popular day for people to surf and shop on the web.

"With the whole family together, there is no better time to research or book that next holiday."

Lastminute.com recorded 20 per cent more bookings and 22 per cent more traffic on Christmas Day 2006 than on Christmas Day 2005, and is expecting even more people to visit the site and book a holiday this year.

IMRG's estimates are based on a combination of sales data from payment services provider SecureTrading and market research firm eDigital Research.

The data is collected from a sample of over 250 million page views per month from UK retailers which have its survey code installed on their websites.

Chris Russell, director of eDigital Research, believes that this year's web traffic will follow a similar pattern to last year's, when a steep increase in traffic to retail sites was seen in the days after Christmas, reaching a pinnacle on 27 December.

"Up to 20 per cent of all high street sales are preceded by online research. In the Christmas sales we could see even more people turning to the web before hitting the high street to get a head start and cut out some of the leg work," said Russell.

"A new development this year was retailers such as Argos encouraging shoppers to buy online on Christmas Day, where the sales started a day earlier than at traditional stores.

"Combined with the expected sale of 'top-ups' for Christmas gifts online, for example those who have received an iPod for Christmas logging on to buy songs on iTunes, online retailers had a busier Christmas Day in 2007 than ever before."