Cyber Monday was a success for online retailers with an 8 percent increase in visitor traffic over last year, according to the National Retail Federation, the largest retail trade group.
Some analysts issued reports of double-digit gains in online sales. A San Mateo, California-based marketing firm, Coremetrics, said its preliminary findings had Cyber Monday sales jumping 14 percent. More precise numbers are expected this week.
For credit card issuers in particular, the initial online figures are encouraging. However, online shopping represents less than 10 percent of all Christmas holiday season spending. And for the most part, Black Friday in-store sales have been reported as flat, compared to last year.
For now, retailers are continuing to heavily push online promotions that started on Cyber Monday to maintain the upward momentum in website traffic.
In its survey of Cyber Monday traffic, the NRF found that online shoppers either hit the keyboard in the morning or in the evening, and avoided possibly getting into trouble by cruising for bargains from their workstations throughout the day.
This year, many online retailers saw Cyber Monday online visits and sales shift from mid-day hours to the early morning and evening hours, the NRF said.
“More families have high-speed internet access at home and don’t need to rely on their work computers to make holiday purchases,” said Scott Silverman, executive director of Shop.org, a division of the NRF.
The retail group did not have sales numbers, but is encouraged by the increase in website traffic to its heavily promoted cybermonday.com site, which featured special discounts from more than 700 retailers. The site had 15.8 million visitors on Cyber Monday, an increase of 8 percent from 2008. The busiest hour was 9-10 a.m., with 1.2 million hits.
Cyber Monday is a term coined by Shop.org in 2005 after retailers noticed a growing trend of people shopping online on the Monday after Thanksgiving.
“While many online retailers are breathing a sigh of relief after a successful Cyber Monday, they will quickly shift their focus to finding ways to bring shoppers online for the rest of the holiday season,” Silverman said. “Many websites will experience another huge surge in traffic the week of December 14, when shipping offers begin to expire.
Silverman added that companies are “taking lessons learned from Cyber Monday” and making modifications to their offerings in coming days.
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