Amazon Prime Day orders surpassed last year’s inaugural event by 60% worldwide and was hailed by the etailer as its ‘biggest day ever’.

amazon warehouse

amazon warehouse

Amazon was delighted at the response to Prime Day

The online behemoth said Prime members saved more than double on deals than they did during the retail extravaganza last year and that Amazon devices also sold in record numbers over the course of the 24-hour retail event on Tuesday.

It was the online retailer’s second annual Prime Day event and gave exclusive discounts throughout the day to Amazon Prime members in the UK, the US, Spain, Japan, Italy, Germany, France, Canada, Belgium and Austria.

Last year the etail event notched up 398 orders per second worldwide but, according to a statement from the online retailer, this year’s Prime Day was “the biggest day ever for Amazon”.

UK country manager Doug Gurr said: “We have been delighted by the response from our customers for Prime Day here in the UK.

“In fact, the day was our biggest day of the year so far, and by 6pm customers had already ordered more items than Prime Day last year.”

Retailers launched offers to rival Amazon’s Prime Day in the UK - Dixons Carphone discounted thousands of products during a 10-day sale while Argos offered free Fast Track delivery to coincide with the retail extravaganza.

The top-selling items in the UK were all Amazon devices, including the etailer’s Fire TV stick, Fire tablet and Kindle Paperwhite.

Amazon Prime vice-president Greg Geeley said that the etailer would “definitely be doing this again” based on the success of this year’s Prime Day.