Holiday Shopping Increases 15% Online, Shoppers Spend Billions


Web monitoring firm comScore has marked a recent 15 percent weekly increase in online holiday sales in what could possibly be the busiest week of the year.

According to the research company shoppers have spent $30.9 billion online from Nov. 1 through Dec. 16, that number compares to just $26.9 billion during the same period of 2010.

The tracking company also found that during four days last week buyers purchased more than $1 billion worth of goods for a total of $6.31 billion, 15% better than last years best week total.

According to comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni that five day period:

“Will almost certainly be the heaviest week of the online holiday shopping season.”

The company notes that this years Cyber Monday is still the largest online shopping day ever recorded with a 22 percent increase to $1.25 billion (pictured above), a number that just barely surpassed $1 billion last year.

With holiday shopping expected to make up 40 percent of annual revenues for 2011 the growing trend towards online purchases is good news for online retailers and bad news for the more expensive to operate brick and mortar locations.

An interesting point of interest was also discovered through the company’s research, according to comScore more than half of all purchases made online for the current holiday shopping period were sent to customers using free shipping offers.

Do you believe online shopping sales figures will continue to see a large increase in the years to come thanks to the mobility of users who now take advantage of tablets, smartphones and other portable devices on a more regular basis?

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