Seasonally adjusted, total online retailing sales fell by $17.9 million to $3.65 billion in October 2023, Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data revealed.
This followed a rise of $89 million (2.5%) in September, with seasonally adjusted through-the-year sales up by $113.3 million (3.2%).
However, in original terms, online sales rose by $217 million (5.9%) in October, following a flatline in September compared to August.
A seasonally adjusted series involves estimating and removing the cyclical and seasonal effects from the original data. According to the ABS, seasonally adjusting a time series is useful to understand the underlying patterns of change or movement without the impact of the seasonal or cyclical effects.
In October 2023, food online sales were $1.1 billion and non-food online sales were $2.47 billion, in seasonally adjusted terms.
Food sales rose by $85.5 million (7.8%) while non-food fell by $103.4 million (4%).
In original terms, the proportion of online food retailing sales to total food retailing rose from 6% to 6.1% from September to October. The proportion of online non-food retailing sales to total non-food retailing rose from 16.1% to 16.6%.
Overall online sales compared to total retailing revenue rose from 10.5% to 10.8%.
This comes as the fashion sector reported a $30.6 million drop in total revenue between September and October.
Overall sales in fashion for October were $2.98 billion, down from $3.01 billion in September 2023. Compared to October 2022, fashion sales have fallen by exactly $20 million.
Department store sales have also dropped by $12 million to $1.90 billion in October 2023, however, the sector is up by around $8 million compared to October 2022.
Overall Australian retail turnover fell 0.2% to $35.76 billion in October, following a rise of 0.9% in September and a 0.2% rise in August.
"Retail turnover fell in October after a short-lived boost in spending in September,” ABS head of retail statistics Ben Dorber said. “Turnover was down in all retail categories except food retailing [up 0.5%].
“It looks like consumers hit the pause button on some discretionary spending in October, likely waiting to take advantage of discounts during Black Friday sales events in November. This is a pattern we have seen develop in recent years as Black Friday sales grow in popularity.”