'Cyber Monday' delivers online shoppers to e-retailers

Computerworld - Traffic to retail Web sites by North American shoppers was up almost 50% yesterday compared to a month ago, according to Internet network accelerator Akamai Technologies Inc.
Peak online shopping traffic on what has been dubbed "Cyber Monday" by online retailers reached more than 1.8 million visitors per minute in North America, and more than 3.1 million visitors per minute worldwide, according to the Akamai Net Usage Index for Retail. Akamai also reported that in North America, the number of people visiting online retail sites yesterday was 20% higher than on Nov. 21.
Traffic on a typical Monday peaks at 4 p.m. EST, Akamai said, but that peak was surpassed by 10 a.m. EST yesterday. In fact, the company's Index for Retail hit new daily and weekly peaks before the West Coast workforce even got online, Akamai said.
"We saw a 20% increase in traffic from last Monday's peak, about a 25% increase from Monday, Nov. 14, and a 32% increase from the peak three weeks ago, Monday Nov. 7," said an Akamai spokeswoman.
Online comparison shopping service PriceGrabber.com reported an 87% increase in the number of referrals to online merchants compared to the Monday after Thanksgiving in 2004. PriceGrabber.com said it sent more than $200 million in sales leads to merchants yesterday, with an average order referral of $386.
"The so-called Cyber Monday phenomenon once again played out as workers returned from the holiday weekend and took advantage of high-speed connections at the office to continue holiday shopping," PriceGrabber.com said in a statement. "PriceGrabber.com's statistics show that the peak hour of traffic was at [noon] Pacific time, and was consistently busy throughout the typical work-day hours from Eastern through Pacific time zones."
However, while Cyber Monday was the biggest traffic day so far this holiday season, it might not be the busiest. Based on last year's performance, PriceGrabber.com said the actual peak day for online shopping is still to come, with unique users and referrals for each of the first two Mondays in December likely to exceed yesterday's online shopping traffic.
Shopping.com, another online comparison shopping service, reported a 37% increase in Web traffic yesterday compared to a year ago and noted that traffic was also up on the Friday after Thanksgiving, when shoppers traditionally hit brick-and-mortar stores. Online traffic last Friday was up 30% compared to the same day last year. Shopping.com said in a statement that more than 2.8 million unique shoppers visited the site on Friday, with more than 3.4 million unique shoppers visiting the yesterday.