U.S. Retailers Give Thanks for Internet Shopping

Shoppers pounding the streets of America’s cities were not the only ones on Thanksgiving weekend to take the country’s stores by storm – Internet shoppers were busy at it, too.

 

Online sales, excluding travel, doubled to $133 million on Thanksgiving Day compared to the same day last year, according to ComScore Networks, an Internet research company. On the following day, Friday, online sales were $250 million, up 41 percent from a year earlier.

The jump in online buying was due to e-tailers using the same marketing techniques as bricks-and-mortar stores - offering special discounts to encourage consumers to shop early.

“We certainly expected a strong performance during the holiday weekend, but these are impressive figures,” said Dan Hess, senior vice president at ComScore.

Traditionally, the online shopping season begins on the Monday after Thanksgiving, when shoppers start buying from their workplace computers. This year, it started earlier since online retailers made extra special efforts to secure online sales, and millions of households now enjoy high-speed, always-on Internet connections, making home shopping easier.

Around 53 percent of U.S. homes are estimated to have high-speed Internet connections, compared with 41 percent a year ago, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.

According to Nielsen/NetRatings, the sites that enjoyed the biggest jumps in visits on Friday, compared with a week earlier, were those of the traditional retailers, including walmart.com, sears.com and, especially, toysrus.com whose traffic levels soared 212.6 percent Friday.

Wal-Mart, the largest jewelry retailer in the U.S., said Thanksgiving Day was the busiest day online so far this season, with sales doubling from last year.

ComScore estimates that online holiday retail sales, excluding travel, will rise between 23 percent and 26 percent, to between $15.1 billion and $15.5 billion.