Surging Black Friday and Cyber Monday Online Business

Well first, there hasn’t been a posting in almost a month and I apologize as the season and a certain wedding has kept me away from the keyboard.

Looking back, man is there a lot to talk about. Let’s start with the basics: 1) E-commerce is still growing scary fast, and 2) Cyber Monday is not a myth…although perhaps one that still needs defining.

 1) According to Hitwise, Thanksgiving Day traffic increased 20% over last year. comScoreNetworks reported similar gains, showing online sales up 29% over Thanksgiving Day 2006. Black Friday saw a similar surge, showing an increase of 22% from 2006 to 2007.

These results fall in line with projections of strong +20% growth in online business during the 2007 calendar year. This remains a massive growth curve. Just imagine getting a 20% pay increase tomorrow on your salary, and you see why the industry remains so progressive.

2) Cyber Monday is not a myth…sort of. Cyber Monday is not the biggest shopping day of the year, but still a very strong one, and worth it’s status as a “line in the sand” showing the burgeoning rush of the holiday season. comScore reports this year retailers saw $733M in sales on Cyber Monday, up at the same +20% increase as inidicated on previous days when compared with the $608M spent in 2006 on the Monday after Thanksgiving Day Weekend.

The only dent in Cyber Monday’s status, is that the next couple of Mondays afterward could potentially be bigger. As recent studies show, a gradual increase in sales revenue continues until the 2nd week of December, then begins to fall sharply as consumers become concerned with deliver-ability of their last minute purchases.

There is a lot of information to sift through, so I will be back with more to begin to look deeper into the 2007 Holiday Shopping Season and see if any surprises have happened.

December 6th, 2007