Online Christmas spending to rise 10 percent

LONDON (Reuters) - Britons will spend 4.7 billion pounds online this Christmas, up 10 percent on last year, adding to pressure on struggling bricks-and-mortar retailers to adapt to the Internet, a survey showed on Monday.

Business advisory firm Deloitte said consumers who do most of their shopping online are expecting to spend an average of 773 pounds this Christmas, compared with 655 pounds for the total population.

Unlike shoppers in other channels whose year-on-year planned spend is declining, online shoppers are planning to spend the same as last year on gifts and food this Christmas, it added.

Deloitte said the number of retailers offering transactional Web sites had increased to 81 percent from 71 percent last year and 51 percent in 2006.

But online sales are still a small proportion of most retailers' revenue, with 56 percent reporting online sales accounting for less than 10 percent of their total.

"Online retailing is still growing, showing more resilience to the current economic storm," said Anish Patel, Deloitte's director in retail consulting.

(Reporting by Mark Potter; Editing by Richard Hubbard)