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![TMCNet: Retailers shift focus to Web sales for Cyber Monday [BC-CNS-CYBERMONDAY:SJ]](http://images.tmcnet.com/siteart/invisible.gif)
Retailers shift focus to Web sales for Cyber Monday [BC-CNS-CYBERMONDAY:SJ]
(San Jose Mercury News (CA) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) SAN JOSE, Calif. _ The online holiday shopping season got its traditional kick-off Monday as e-commerce vendors touted big discounts to lure in shoppers.
Despite the economic downturn, analysts expected "Cyber Monday" sales to be up from last year, thanks in part to last year's poor results.
"We have tempered enthusiasm" about how the online shopping season will turn out, said Andrew Lipsman, director of industry analysis at comScore, a market research firm. "There does seem to be more optimism from consumers."
But Lipsman said the economic environment _ particularly with unemployment over 10 percent _ will weigh on sales. "There's just less disposable income in consumers' wallets."
The recession was a drag on online spending for much of the year. Through the end of October, U.S. consumers' online spending was down 1 percent from the same period last year, according to comScore.
But sales have picked up in recent weeks. Last week, consumers spent 6 percent more online than they did in the same week last year, according to comScore. On Thursday and Friday, sales were up 11 percent.
Those increases reflect favorable comparisons. Online sales in November and December last year fell three percent from the previous year.
Still, online retailers are enjoying a surge in traffic. On Sunday night, traffic to e-commerce sites from North American Internet users hit 4.6 million visitors per minute, according to Akamai, a Web hosting company. On Monday afternoon, e-commerce sites received 4.2 million visitors per minute, up nearly 60 percent from "normal" traffic levels.
Overall, Shop.org, the digital division of the National Retail Federation, expected 96.5 million Americans to shop online on Monday, up from 85 million last year.
Retailers were offering lots of enticements. Sites such as Amazon.com, Walmart.com and Buy.com put together special pages to promote their Cyber Monday specials, many of which were promotions that actually began as much as a week earlier.
Among the Monday deals: a Garmin nuvi GPS device that Amazon offered for about $115, some 50 percent off its normal price; a Sony Bravia 32-inch LCD TV at Walmart.com for about $400; and a 32-gigabyte iPod touch at BestBuy.com for about $270, which was $30 off its usual price.
BlueNile.com, an online jeweler, offered free overnight shipping on every order. BlueFly.com, an apparel store, gave 15 percent discount plus free shipping when customers bought two items. And eBags.com, which sells handbags and luggage, offered 20 percent off and free shipping on orders over $100.
More than 87 percent of online retailers planned to offer some kind of promotional deal on Cyber Monday, according to Shop.org. That was up from about 84 percent last year and 72 percent two years ago.
Such discounts "have become a part of the holiday shopping culture," said Larry Joseloff, Shop.org's vice president of content.
The push seemed to be working _ at least for some retailers. GSI Commerce, which runs the Web stores for companies such as Ace Hardware and Toys "R" Us, said that its same-store sales, which compare results for the same group of stores year-over-year, for Thursday through Sunday were up 17 percent from the same period last year.
"We're seeing the recession favoring online (retail)," said Fiona Dias, the company's executive vice president of strategy.
At e-commerce giant Amazon.com, holiday sales are "exceeding expectations," said Anya Waring, a company spokeswoman. Waring did not quantify the increase, but Amazon predicted last month that its fourth-quarter sales would grow by between 21 percent and 36 percent from the same period last year.
"Things are going really, really well," said Waring.
Other online merchants also enjoyed big bumps in business. The amount of money that passed through PayPal, eBay's online payment company, on Black Friday was up 20 percent from last year. Shoppers purchased more than a million items on eBay that day, which was also up from last year.
"Cyber Monday," a term coined by the NRF, is the online corollary to Black Friday, which marks the start of the retail shopping season. It typically is not the top online shopping day of the year, but usually ranks among them. Last year, consumers spent $846 million online on Cyber Monday, making it the third biggest online shopping day of the year, according to comScore.
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(c) 2009, San Jose Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.).
Visit MercuryNews.com, the World Wide Web site of the Mercury News, at http://www.mercurynews.com.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
KeyWords:: BC-CNS-CYBERMONDAY:SJ BC CNS CYBERMONDAY SJ
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