Reston, Va. – Cyber Monday was the heaviest online shopping day in U.S. history, according to new figures released by Reston-based comScore. Online spending reached $1.25 billion on the day, marking just the second billion-dollar day on record and topping last year’s Cyber Monday figure of $1.03 billion by 22 percent.
“Cyber Monday was yet another historic day for e-commerce,” said Gian Fulgoni, the chairman of comScore. “While last year saw Cyber Monday rank as the heaviest online spending day of the year for the first time ever, 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.”
Overall, 10 million people made purchases online during the day, representing the first time on record that threshold has been reached in a single day. The average online buyer conducted 1.9 online transactions for a total of nearly $125 in spending.
This article was also published in Potomac Tech Wire.
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Press release – http://tinyurl.com/6lqgme7
Photo by Flickr user MIKI Yoshihito, used under Creative Commons license
The economy may still be sluggish and unemployment at a stratospheric level, but you wouldn’t know it if you were an online retailer this past Monday. Cyber Monday has quickly become one of the biggest shopping days of the year and, with mobile shopping still in its early days and traffic growing by more than 200%, there is little doubt that next year’s numbers will be even more impressive. It would also be helpful if the economy begins to grow at a healthier rate and unemployment falls to a less apocalyptic level (today’s news about it falling by 0.4% is encouraging).