Cyber Monday sales may hit record-breaking $1.2 billion

Today's online sales are likely to be another hit; Amazon leads pack as most-visited retailer

It’s the Monday after Thanksgiving, and if you’ve mustered up the guts to check your email (which is bound to be in shambles by now), you’ve probably already been blasted by the onslaught of Cyber Monday deals from retailers, advertisers, daily deal sites, and everything in-between.  It’s inevitable, after the record-breaking Cyber Monday retailers saw last year.  So will this Cyber Monday be another chart-topper?

So far, the signs look good.  ComScore reported Sunday that online retail saw a massive 26% spike on Black Friday, raking in $816 million in one day.  By comparison, in 2010, online shopping on Black Friday drew in $648 million.  Overall, for the holiday season to date, online spending has jumped 15%. 

But the real meat and potatoes of the online holiday shopping season will be revealed after today’s Web shopping bonanza.  Last year’s Cyber Monday was a record breaker on several fronts.  First and foremost, it was the first time in history that online sales topped $1 billion in a single day.  Secondly, it was the most successful Cyber Monday in history.  And third—and most interesting—it was the first time in history that Cyber Monday was actually the heaviest online shopping day of the year.

This year, Cyber Monday could hit $1.2 billion, according to comScore.

Traditionally, the Saturday before Christmas is the heaviest shopping day of the year, but over the last three years, Cyber Monday has been slowly climbing the online ranks.  In 2008, it was the third heaviest online shopping day of the year, in 2009 it inched up to the number two spot, and in 2010 it finally claimed the top spot as the peak online shopping day of the year.

Since “Cyber Monday” was first coined in 2005 by Shop.org, sales on that day have grown steadily by about 16% a year.  Will this year be another record-breaker?  ComScore is betting on it, predicting sales to top $1.2 billion today.  More than 50 million Americans visited online retail sites on Black Friday, marking a 35% increase over last year, with each of the top five retail sites seeing double-digit increases in visits over last year. 

Taking the top spot was Amazon.com, which also made headlines last year when it sold 13.7 million items on Cyber Monday, which broke down to 158 items per second.

So it seems inevitable that Amazon will take the cake again this year, likely followed by the usual suspects: Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Target, and Apple.

Image source: inquisitr.com