Consumers spent $1.13 billion with online retailers Monday, Dec. 12, up 19% from the comparable day last year, making Monday the third-highest day for online sales this holiday season, comScore Inc. says.
Some marketers refer to the second Monday in December as Green Monday because it is often one of the top sales days for e-retailers. The top two online sales days thus far this holiday season were Monday, Nov. 28, commonly referred to as Cyber Monday, at $1.25 billion, and Monday, Dec. 5 at $1.17 billion, according to comScore, which estimates online sales based on online purchases made by the approximately 2 million people in its online research panel.
Sales on the first Monday in December (Dec. 5) edged out Green Monday for second place for the first time. Cyber Monday generated the most single-day sales for the third year in a row. ComScore chairman Gian Fulgoni credits e-retailers’ heavy promotional activity around Thanksgiving weekend and Cyber Monday for creating the Cyber Monday high, but says he expects this week to be the heaviest sales week of the season for e-retailers. Season-to-date e-retail sales, dating back to Nov. 1, had reached $26.8 billion through Monday, according to comScore. Through Dec. 14, total holiday e-retail sales are up 27% from the same time a year ago for the 50 top retailers tracked by Chase Paymentech’s Cyber Holiday Pulse Index. The number of orders those retailers are processing also grew substantially; Chase Paymentech says transactions are up 38% from the same time last year.
Sales are expected to strongly continue this week. ”We could see several billion-dollar spending days, punctuated by Free Shipping Day on Friday, Dec. 16,” Fulgoni says. Free Shipping Day is a marketing event organized by the web site FreeShipping.org. Nearly 1,900 e-retailers are expected to participate and offer free shipping on orders placed Friday.
IBM Corp. says online sales for the 500 major U.S. online retailers it includes in its IBM Benchmark survey were up 11.8% Monday compared to the same day a year ago. The IBM survey does not report dollar sales. The survey says transactions completed on mobile devices accounted for 7.1% of Monday sales, up from 2.1% a year ago.