Cyber Monday online sales could top $700M

Computerworld - Online shopping on Cyber Monday in the U.S. could top $700 million, a new record for online spending, according to comScore Inc.

Online shoppers in the U.S. spent $531 million on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, up 22% from last year, according to comScore. And on Thanksgiving Day, shoppers spent $272 million online, up 29% from last year, comScore said. If comScore's prediction proves correct, the figure for Cyber Monday would be a 15% increase over last year's sales of $608 million.

Black Friday, the traditional kickoff to the holiday shopping season, is typically regarded as the busiest shopping day of the year for brick-and-mortar stores, which offer deep discounts to hearty shoppers willing to get up at dawn or earlier and brave the crowds. But those who don't want to head to the malls look to online retailers for good deals.

"Online spending on Black Friday has historically represented an early indicator of how the rest of the season will shake out," said comScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni, in a statement. "That the 22% growth rate versus last year is outpacing the overall growth rate for the first three weeks of the season should be seen as a sign of positive momentum."

ComScore said the hottest product category was video games, consoles and accessories, which was up 134% from last year.

Based on comScore's estimates, today could be the heaviest online shopping day on record, Fulgoni said. However, he predicted that even heavier online shopping days are yet to come.

Price-comparison shopping site PriceGrabber.com said the number of merchant referrals it made to online retailers on Black Friday increased 47% over last year. PriceGrabber said the popular categories were electronics, computers, clothing, cameras and video games. Shopping.com, which also performs price comparisons, said its merchant referrals on Black Friday were up 61% from last year.

Internet performance analysis company Keynote Systems Inc. said that one-third of the 30 major retail sites it monitors for its holiday retail index showed significant slowdowns. The Buy.com and Lowe's Home Improvement sites were among those at which performance dropped to a level at which consumers were likely to abandon their purchases, the company said. Good news for consumers is that the daylong site outages of previous years appear to be a thing of the past, Keynote said.

Information from the IDG News Service was included in this report.