Cyber Monday Sales Up 19%: IBM

By Alan Wolf -- TWICE, 11/30/2010

San Mateo, Calif. - Sales on Cyber Monday were up 19.4 percent year over year, outpacing online revenue on Black Friday.

According to a report by Coremetrics, a unit of IBM, yesterday's average order was $194.89, up 8.3 percent from last year and 2.1 percent higher than the average haul on Black Friday, making it the biggest shopping day of the year.

Total Cyber Monday sales were up 31.1 percent over e-tail orders on Black Friday, the research firm said. Shopping momentum hit its peak at noon EST (9:00 a.m. PST), but maintained a steadier pace throughout the day than on Cyber Monday 2009.

"Cyber Monday came in as the biggest shopping day of the year so far," said John Squire, chief strategy officer for IBM Coremetrics. "Consumers this year appear much more willing to open their wallets and are turning to online stores for the convenience of shopping wherever and whenever they like, but also as their primary source of information about products and inventory levels."

He added that retailers have done "an exceptional job across the board of appealing to consumers with highly personalized promotions and a slew of free shipping promotions."

E-tailers also leveraged social-networking sites and mobile shopping apps to provide information about deals and inventory levels. While the percentage of visitors arriving from social-networking sites is fairly small relative to all online visitors -- nearly 1 percent -- it is gaining momentum, Coremetrics said, with Facebook dominating the platform.

What's more, 3.9 percent of Cyber Monday shoppers visited a retailer's site using a mobile device, the research firm said.

Coremetrics' findings are based on data gathered directly from the web sites of more than 500 leading U.S. retailers and processed using a cloud-based web analytics platform.