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Today is expected to be the busiest online shopping day of the year in the UK, with experts forecasting that spending will reach £320m.
The internet retail trade body IMRG said it expected the peak time for shopping to be between 1pm and 2pm, as consumers who had done their research on the high street over the weekend logged on to order their gifts.
The payment card issuer Retail Decisions (ReD) has forecast that the busiest minute of the day will be 1.31pm - around the time most people get back to their desks after popping to the sandwich shop.
It predicts £980,865 will be spent in what has been dubbed a "mega minute". Last year's busiest minute online was 1:09pm on December 10 when UK shoppers spent an estimated £767,500.
Online sales records are being broken each year as more and more consumers start to feel comfortable shopping over the internet and "etailers" adapt to make the experience more convenient.
The impact of the credit crunch has forced many consumers to consider cutting costs, and despite recent high street sales some of the best prices for electrical goods and items like books and CDs can still be found online.
Research for IMRG found that 77% of shoppers were planning to do at least half their Christmas shopping online this year, compared with 56% last year. It said it expected online spending to reach £13bn in the run-up to Christmas - 15% more than in the final quarter of last year.
David Smith, director of operations at IMRG, said: "The internet has become the best place for shoppers looking to make the most out of their squeezed spending resources and find the best prices and products for presents this Christmas. Online has definitely come of age this Christmas."
Smith said that although transactions levels were set to soar there would not be as many sales of big-ticket items as in previous years.
"Last year people were still buying the larger electrical items like LCD TVs, but that has really dropped off this year," he said.
Defying the gloom
The IMRG's figures show that last Monday was the biggest day for online transactions ever, with 3% more sales than the previous record, which was set last year. However, the value of those sales was no higher than last year's record.
Internet retailers will be hoping to defy the gloom on the high street, which has seen big-name stores slash prices to in a bid to persuade consumers to open their wallets. At the weekend, shoppers at Debenhams were being offered 20% off all stock, while Gap had cut some prices by up to 30%.
The signs have been good from the US, where despite the economic downturn shoppers turned to the internet in force for last week's Cyber Monday. Figures from Comscore showed more than 57 million Americans visited retail sites on Cyber Monday - a 33% jump on the average daily visitors in November.
Online sales were up 15% year-on-year to $846m, with 2 million more customers than last year making purchases. However, although the average transaction value was up 3% from $53.89 last year to $55.76, the average spend per consumer was down from $96.62 to $91.43.
Cyber Monday, which is the first Monday after Thanksgiving, is the traditional start to the online Christmas shopping season in the US, and in previous years has proved to be an accurate bellwether for the overall performance of the online shopping season.
Most wanted: Current bestsellers on Amazon
DVDs: Mama Mia, The Dark Knight, Wall-E
Video games: Mario Kart with Wii Wheel, Official Wii Wheel, Wii Nunchuk Controller
Books: The Tales of Beedle the Bard, by J. K. Rowling; Dear Fatty by Dawn French; Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama
Toys: Silverlit PicooZ Helicopter, Original Rubik's Cube, Top Trumps - Top Gear
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