Online shoppers spent $733M on 'Cyber Monday'
Online shoppers in the U.S. set a record for one-day sales on Cyber Monday,
racking up $733 million in purchases, comScore Networks said Tuesday.
The figure represents a 21 percent increase over the same day last year and
the most money that U.S. shoppers have ever spent in a single day online, according
to comScore.
Online shoppers have spent $10.74 billion in total so far this holiday season,
which comScore measures from Nov. 1. That's 17 percent more than during the
same period last year.
Cyber Monday is the first Monday after the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, when
people return to work and begin making online purchases, as opposed to brick-and-mortar
store purchases they may have made on "Black Friday"-- the day after
Thanksgiving.
Online stores have been struggling to keep up with the demand. On Monday, Internet
performance analysis company Keynote Systems said 10 of the 30 major retail
sites it monitors for its holiday retail index showed significant slowdowns.
The total number of online shoppers was up 38 percent this year, comScore said,
although it noted an average decrease in spending of 12 percent.
Overstock.com and Circuit City's Web site were the two hottest sites compared
to normal traffic, each experiencing jumps of over 130 percent. In contrast,
Amazon.com visits were up only 50 percent, while Apple saw a 5 percent bump
for its online store.
Thanksgiving Day and "Black Friday" also saw jumps in sales, with
online consumers spending $272 million and $531 million on those days, respectively.
Both topped sales for the same days in 2006, with respective increases of 29
and 22 percent.
ComScore did not provide an update on the most popular items for Cyber Monday,
but as of early Wednesday morning, Nintendo's Wii games console and Microsoft's
30G byte Zune media player were the two most popular items according to comparison
shopping site PriceGrabber, positions they established over the holiday weekend.
IDG News Service
Symantec Backup Exec 12 and Backup Exec System Recovery 8 deliver industry leading Windows data protection and system recovery. Download this whitepaper to find out the top reasons to upgrade and how to get continuous data protection and complete system recovery.
Data and system loss — from a hard drive failure, malicious attack, natural disaster, or simple human error — can happen anytime. Don’t leave your business vulnerable. Make sure you have a secure recovery strategy in place. Symantec's latest backup and system recovery technology can efficiently restore critical applications, individual emails and documents and even restore your entire system in minutes in the event of a loss.
Businesses face a growing challenge to ensure that the IT environment is properly protected. Backup Exec 12 integrates with other applications in the Symantec family of products, to complement your current data protection strategy, keep your data securely backed up and make it recoverable when you need it most.
