Cyber Monday is the eCommerce measuring stick

12/04/2008

Cyber Monday is to eCommerce what Black Friday has been to traditional offline retailers. It has come to be viewed as the measuring stick for how much shoppers spend online during the holiday season. Hitwise, Nielsen, and ComScore all saw an increase in online shopping on Cyber Monday.

It’s worth noting that ComScore’s findings are at odds with reports from major payment processor Chase Paymentech. While Paymentech did record an uptick in order volume, the overall average of order sales decreased. This added up to a flat sales volume, according to a company rep.

Taking a look at Hitwise stats, U.S. shoppers posted a 5% increase in visits to online shops. Hitwise looked at 100 Internet-only retailers. It found that comparison shopping was down by 21% and that visitors to catalog websites fell by 4%. Giant online retailer Amazon came out on top, pulling in almost 11% of U.S. visits among the top 500 sites measured.

Nielsen showed a 10% year over year increase in traffic to its Holiday eShopping Index. The beauty niche posted the largest increase in traffic – an astounding 151%. Video games were also popular, posting a 112% increase. Here again, Amazon.com was a big winner. Its unique user count on Cyber Monday rose to 9 million – a 25% increase. Comparison shopping sites didn’t fare as well, with unique audience visits down 12%

Cyber Monday Spending

According to a ComScore report, Cyber Monday shoppers spent $846 million. Accounting for part of this was a considerable increase from 2007 in Thanksgiving weekend spending. Overall, however, spending was down for the month of November compared to last year – by 2%.

eCommerce industry experts suspect part of this was due to consumers holding out for special deals and discounts over the holiday weekend, as opposed to spending earlier in the month.

Additional eCommerce spending reports – including more on Cyber Monday spending and December spending – wont’ be available until early next year.

For more insight visit Ecommerce Development Services