Cyber Monday Posts Strong Sales

By Eric Gursky

Cyber Monday, the marketing term used to describer the monday following Black Friday took place this past week. Many online retailers count on Cyber Monday to be one of their biggest sales days just as malls count of Black Friday to deliver good results. In 2008 when our economy was in a recession many retailers were blindsided with the weak turnouts and low sales. This year was hoping to be much different.
By late Monday afternoon sales were already up 11 % from a year ago. Web retailers had stepped up promotions and discounts in order to capitalize on the shoppers not finding all their wish list items in stores. According to Coremetrics, a San Mateo, Calif.-based company which likes to compare Cyber Monday sales to online Black Friday sales, to see how "cyber" the Monday actually is. As of about 5 p.m. Pacific time, Cyber Monday was about 13 percent ahead of Black Friday.
Based on results from 500 participating vendors, including Macy's, Nordstrom and Bloomingdale's, Coremetrics said the average online order grew to $180.03 on Cyber Monday, up 38 percent from $130.24 on the same day last year.
NBC posted similar results on Cyber Monday, ShopNBC.com achieved its highest traffic day year-to-date, with 114,600 unique visitors to the site. In addition to surpassing 2008's Cyber Monday traffic by 14%, web penetration accounted for an industry leading 48% of the total company sales. The increase in traffic to the site, along with its extended product assortment and promotional offerings, led to an 18% increase in sales vs. last year's same period. Total orders on ShopNBC.com increased 40% over the previous year.

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