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An Amazon warehouse in Swansea, Wales, last week. The Monday after Thanksgiving was Amazon.com’s busiest day last year.
Cyber Monday may have started as a made-up occasion to give underdog e-commerce sites jealous of Black Friday a day of their own, but it has become an undeniably real thing — surprising even the people who invented it.
Last year was the first time that the Monday after
Thanksgiving was the biggest online shopping day of the year by sales, and the first day that online spending passed $1 billion, according to comScore, a research company that measures Web use. On this Monday, early sales reports indicated that it could again be the best day of the season for e-commerce companies.
Though comScore did not release official sales figures on Monday, it said it expected e-commerce sites to reach $1.2 billion in sales, which would be a 17 percent increase over last year. IBM Benchmark, which tracks e-commerce sales, said they were up 15 percent.
“We believe that Cyber Monday is definitely going to be the biggest shopping day of 2011 online,” said Eric Best, chief executive of Mercent, which does online advertising and e-commerce on third-party marketplaces like Amazon.com for 400 brands, including Zappos.com and HSN.
Still, e-commerce analysts cautioned that strong Cyber Monday sales did not necessarily promise a merry online shopping season in a dreary economy. Instead, shoppers could be seeking deals because they are financially struggling.
“I don’t think that what happened is any telltale sign that people are breaking out their wallets,” said Sucharita Mulpuru, e-commerce analyst at Forrester Research. “A happy Web season doesn’t mean the economy is improving, just that people are becoming more mature from a technology standpoint and more savvy about finding good deals.”
Some online retailers took a rosier view.
“I don’t think we’re just pulling sales forward,” said Peter Cobb, co-founder and senior vice president of eBags. “I do think it’s a sign of a long, extended holiday season.”
Over all, online sales are expected to increase 15 percent this holiday season, more than last year and significantly more than the 2.8 percent increase expected offline. Shoppers spent about 38 percent of their total weekend budget online, a slight increase over last year, according to the National Retail Federation. On Black Friday, traditionally a bricks-and-mortar shopping day, people spent $816 million online, 26 percent more than last year, comScore said.
But many shoppers held out for Monday, when they expected deep discounts online. Seventy-eight percent of e-commerce sites offered promotions, according to Shop.org, an industry group. Almost half offered discounts, and a third had free shipping.
