ARMONK, N.Y. –
Cyber Monday web
sales topped $1.25 billion, making it the
heaviest online spending day in history
and the second day on record to surpass
the billion-dollar threshold.
According to market research firm
ComScore, spending surged 22 percent
over Cyber Monday 2010, the previous
record holder.
“Cyber Monday was yet another historic
day for e-commerce,” said Com-
Score chairman Gian Fulgoni. “It will
be interesting to watch the next couple
of weeks to see if any future individual
days in 2011 manage to leapfrog this
year’s highest day-to-date.”
ComScore’s findings jibe with reports
from CE merchants including Abt Electronics,
which enjoyed a 21 percent
surge in online sales and a record 29
percent increase in traffic on Cyber
Monday. On average, Abt’s online customers
spent 14 percent more this year
than last, with tablets, LED TVs, digital
cameras, upright vacuums and headphones
leading the sales charge, president
Jon Abt said.
eBay similarly reported a flurry of
sales activity on Cyber Monday, with
many deals selling out within hours of
posting. Among them: the 16GB Apple
iPad 2 Wi-Fi in white, on sale for $450,
which was purchased at a rate of four
units per minute and sold out in less
than two hours.
IBM’s Smarter Commerce service, in
its fourth annual Cyber Monday Benchmark
report, pegged sales growth even
higher. The study showed that total online
sales soared 33 percent year over
year, exceeding Black Friday web purchases
by 29.3 percent, as average
order value increased 2.6 percent year
over year to $198.26.
And despite retailers’ newfound focus
on social-networking sites, IBM
found that sales referrals from Facebook
and other forums amounted to only
0.56 percent of all online sales on Cyber
Monday and 0.53 percent on Black
Friday. Of that, Facebook was the No.
1 social-networking site, accounting for
86 percent of all social-media traffic on
Monday.
Online shopping peaked at 2:05 p.m.
EST on Monday, and maintained strong
momentum after commuting hours on
both the East and West coasts, IBM
reported.
“Cyber Monday was once again the
big winner for the Thanksgiving holiday
shopping season, with a record number
of consumers focused on finding
the best online deals,” observed John
Squire, chief strategy officer of IBM
Smarter Commerce. “Retailers that
adopted a smarter approach to commerce,
one that allowed them to swiftly
adjust to the shifting shopping habits of
their customers, whether in-store, online
or via their mobile device, were able to
fully benefit from this day and the entire
holiday weekend.”
IBM said it tracked more than a million
transactions for its Cyber Monday
Benchmark report, analyzing terabytes
of raw data from 500 leading U.S. retailers.
Cyber Monday was created in 2005
by Shop.org, the online arm of the National
Retail Federation (NRF) trade
association, as an e-commerce equivalent
to Black Friday to encourage webbased
sales.
