Online US Sales Pass $1 Billion in a Single Day for the First Time
December 02, 10
 Is U.S. consumer growth crossing over to online? Photo: turtlemom4bacon |
In the first 29 days of the November – December 2010 holiday season $13.55 billion has been spent online, a 13-percent increase versus the corresponding days last year, the company reported.
“The online holiday shopping season has clearly gotten off to a very strong start,” said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni, who at the same time cautioned that the early strength in consumer spending is almost certainly the result of retailers’ heavier-than-normal promotional and discounting activity.
However, comScore also found that Cyber Monday’s 16-percent growth was driven primarily by an increase in average spending per buyer - up 12 percent. The number of buyers on Cyber Monday grew only by 4 percent to 9 million. The average spending per transaction grew 10 percent to $60.05, while the total number of transactions increased 6 percent to 17.1 million.
On Thanksgiving Day shoppers spent $407 million, a 28 percent increase compared to 2009, the largest year-over-year increase in a single day of spending this season.
These figures are followed with envy by physical stores. Shop traffic increased 2.2 percent on Thanksgiving Day, yet actual spending edged up just 0.3 percent to $10.69 billion, according to ShopperTrak.
Online jewelry sales, with a reported 17.6 percent increase in sales on Thanksgiving, increased another 60.3 percent on Cyber Monday, according to Coremetrics.
An interesting trend to follow - and adapt too - is mobile shopping. Consumers continue to use mobile as a shopping tool. On Cyber Monday, 3.9 percent of people visited a retailer’s site using a mobile device, Coremetrics reported.
“While we anticipate that there will be more billion-dollar spending days ahead as we get deeper into the season, only time will tell if overall consumer online spending remains at the elevated levels we’ve seen thus far.”