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/ 12.01.2011 12:00AM
comScore: Cyber Monday Nets Record $1.25 Billion
ARMONK,
N.Y.: Cyber Monday web sales topped $1.25 billion, making it the
heaviest online spending day in history and the second day on record to surpass
the billion-dollar threshold.
According to market research firm comScore, spending surged 22 percent over
Cyber Monday 2010, the previous record holder.
"Cyber Monday was yet another historic day for e-commerce," said
comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni. "It will be interesting to watch the next
couple of weeks to see if any future individual days in 2011 manage to leapfrog
this year's highest day-to-date."
comScore's findings jibe with reports from CE merchants including Abt
Electronics, which enjoyed a 21 percent surge in online sales and a record 29
percent increase in traffic on Cyber Monday. On average, Abt's online customers
spent 14 percent more this year than last, with tablets, LED TVs, digital
cameras, upright vacuums and headphones leading the sales charge, president Jon
Abt said.
eBay similarly reported a flurry of sales activity on Cyber Monday, with many
deals selling out within hours of posting. Among them: the 16GB Apple iPad 2
Wi-Fi in white, on sale for $450, which was purchased at a rate of four units
per minute and sold out in less than two hours.
In a separate report, IBM pegged Cyber Monday sales growth even higher. The
company's Smarter Commerce service said total online sales soared 33 percent
year over year, exceeding Black Friday web purchases by 29.3 percent, as
average order value increased 2.6 percent year over year to $198.26.
IBM also found that mobile devices played an increasingly important role in
Monday's tallies. According to the company's fourth annual Cyber Monday
Benchmark report, nearly 11 percent of shoppers used a mobile device to visit
e-tail sites, up from 3.9 percent in 2010. This helped spur a 187 percent
increase in mobile channel share, to 6.6 percent of all Cyber Monday purchases.
The move to mobile was also evidenced by eBay, which reported a 397 percent
increase in the number of customers shopping through PayPal Mobile on Cyber
Monday.
According to IBM, Apple's iPhone and iPad remained the two top devices for
mobile traffic on Monday, together accounting for 7.4 percent of all online
visits vs. 3.2 percent for all Android devices.
But when it came to mobile purchases, iPad was the No. 1 platform of choice,
with conversion rates reaching 5.2 percent, compared with 4.6 percent for all
other devices, IBM said.
Still, total mobile sales were higher on Black Friday (9.8 percent of all web
purchases) than Cyber Monday (6.6 percent), as was mobile traffic (14.3 percent
vs. 10.8 percent).
And despite retailers' newfound focus on social-networking sites, IBM found
that sales referrals from Facebook and other forums amounted to only 0.56
percent of all online sales on Cyber Monday and 0.53 percent on Black Friday.
Of that, Facebook was the No. 1 social-networking site, accounting for 86
percent of all social-media traffic on Monday.
Online shopping peaked at 2:05 p.m. EST on Monday, and maintained strong momentum
after commuting hours on both the East and West coasts, IBM reported.
"Cyber Monday was once again the big winner for the Thanksgiving holiday
shopping season, with a record number of consumers focused on finding the best
online deals," observed John Squire, chief strategy officer of IBM Smarter
Commerce. "Retailers that adopted a smarter approach to commerce, one that
allowed them to swiftly adjust to the shifting shopping habits of their
customers, whether in-store, online or via their mobile device, were able to
fully benefit from this day and the entire holiday weekend."
IBM said it tracked more than a million transactions for its Cyber Monday
Benchmark report, analyzing terabytes of raw data from 500 leading U.S.
retailers.
Cyber Monday was created in 2005 by Shop.org, the online arm of the National
Retail Federation (NRF) trade association, as an e-commerce equivalent to Black
Friday to encourage web-based sales.
~ Alan Wolf of TWICE
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