When I arrived this morning there was a brown envelope addressed to me in amongst our post. I took it into the office and opened it with interest, as it was quite bulky and looked like it could contain an interesting freebie or something.

Inside was a carrot.

No letter, no note, nothing besides a carrot. This carrot didn't look unusual, it didn't look like a famous person it was just a plain, orange carrot.

How odd! I can't decide if it's a practical joke, a weird piece of marketing or an insult.

The envelope was postmarked Bolton, dated yesterday and was franked. I've got the franking number (PB804992) so I'm trying to track it down where it came from, if anyone can help I'd appreciate it.

What's next, a turnip?

I know it still feels like summer but it's time to start looking ahead to Christmas. Everyone agrees that this Christmas is going to be the biggest so far for online shopping.

Hitwise (www.hitwise.com) have predicted Internet shopping will increase by around 12% during the Christmas shopping period. With more and more UK shoppers using the web to buy their Christmas gifts, Hitwise said the e-retail sector is predicted to grow 25% in share of visits between July 2005 and December 2005, representing a year-on-year increase of 12% since December last year.

And IMRG (www.imrg.org) have said they think the week ending 3 December 2005 will be the peak for visits to online retailers, with over 1 in every 7 internet visits going to retail web sites
that week.

Here at Shopsafe we say: If you're going to shop online this Christmas do it early, don't leave it 'till the last minute. We should have our Christmas shopping guides and gift ideas ready for you in October.

In addition to yesterday's post where we hit our highest ever position on Trafficranking.com, I see that we're now ranked 14,999th in the world by Alexa. Tell your friends, Shopsafe is on the march!

Smiles all round at shopsafe today, trafficranking.com has us ranked as the decidedly-flying-sounding 707th most popular site in the UK. Check it out here:
http://scripts.trafficranking.com. Choose UK as the country and then search for www.shopsafe.co.uk. (Sorry I can't do a direct link!)

Well this is it, my first steps into the world of blogging. I'm going to try to record what goes on behind the scenes at www.shopsafe.co.uk for anyone that's interested, as well as keeping you up to date with what's new in online shopping. Enjoy!