Consumers spent $453.4 million online over the three-day weekend, excluding travel, following Thanksgiving -- a 67 percent gain over the three days following Thanksgiving a year ago, according to a report Tuesday by comScore Networks Inc., which captures buying activity from a cross section of 1.5 million Internet users.
E-commerce sales continued to gather momentum Monday, when sales totaled $231.5 million, up 37 percent from the Monday after Thanksgiving a year ago, comScore reported.
While the day after Thanksgiving is traditionally seen as the start of the holiday shopping season for brick-and-mortar merchants, the following Monday is now being recognized by some as the kickoff point for e-tailers; comScore has dubbed it "Black Monday," refering to the expectation sales will push retailers out of the red and into the black.
Monday marks the return to work, where many shoppers prefer to do their online shopping.
"The majority of Americans still depend on the work PC for the convenience of high-speed connection," said Dan Hess, a spokesman for comScore.
Because of the compressed holiday shopping season this year -- the holiday season is six days fewer than a year ago -- shoppers began early.
Online shopping was brisk from Nov. 1 to Dec. 1, with sales increasing 36 percent, from $4.3 billion in 2001 to $5.9 billion in 2002, according to BizRate.com, a shopping comparison site that also tracks consumer spending across 2,000 Web sites.
BizRate.com reported that sales for the three days following Thanksgiving were $679.3 million, up 55 percent compared with a year ago.
Despite the fast start, e-tailers, like brick-and-mortar stores, could see sales limited by the sluggish economic environment.
"Consumers are definitely reaching in their wallets to shop online," said Chris Merritt, principal at Kurt Salmon Associates, a retail consulting firm. "However, it is unclear whether they will be reaching deeper this year than last year."
In fact, the compressed season could squeeze e-tailers, as it gives them less time to keep up with stocking hot items.
More online sites are using free shipping as a way to rope in customers. This past Thanksgiving weekend, 140 online companies offered free shipping deals, up 20 percent a year ago, according to BizRate.com.
More sites also have promised their customers they can fulfill orders as late as Dec. 22 or Dec. 23 in time for Christmas Day, a day or two later than a year ago, a bit of a risk, Merritt said.
"They could shine or they could disappoint their customers," he said.
ComScore expects online sales to peak around Dec. 12 or Dec. 13, and drop off on Dec. 19 or Dec. 20, in line with what happened a year ago.
Many e-tailers said they've prepared themselves for this year's challenges.
Ken Seiff, president and CEO of Bluefly.com, which sells discounted designer apparel and accessories, said that the company added more computers this season to be able to handle about twice as much traffic.
Bluefly.com also refined its search engine and added a size finder to filter out clothes that are not available in the customer's desired sizes. The e-tailer started seeing an uptake in sales on Nov. 13, a few days earlier than a year ago, and experienced more than a 40 percent growth on the three-day weekend following Thanksgiving. The company had more than a 35 percent increase in business on Monday, compared with the year-ago period, Seiff said.
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