Cyber Monday to dethrone Black Friday?

Black Friday online sales up, per-person spending in-stores down

Online shopping just keeps getting bigger every year.

This year's Black Friday saw consumers spending $595 million online in an 11% increase over last year's $534 million spending, according to comScore, making it the second biggest online spending day to date.

Besides Black Friday numbers, actual Thanksgiving day online sales rose a similar 10%, from $280 million to $310 million. The 27 days of shopping leading up to the holiday weekend saw a much smaller percentage of growth, 3%, from $10.25 billion to $10.57 billion.

Compared with in-store numbers, online sales were decimated once again. Americans spent an estimated $41.2 billion over the holiday, according to a report by the National Retail Federation, strong numbers especially considering the weak economy. The amount spent per person, however, dropped from around $373 per shopper to about $343 per shopper.

"Black Friday, better known as a shopping bonanza in brick-and-mortar retail stores, is increasingly becoming one of the landmark days in the online holiday shopping world," said comScore chairman, Gian Fulgoni. "The $595 million in online spending this Black Friday represents the second heaviest online spending day of the season-to-date and a double-digit increase from last year. While this acceleration in spending suggests the online holiday season may be shaping up slightly more optimistically than anticipated, it may also reflect the heavy discounting and creative promotions being put forth by retailers that now encompass the use of social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. Cyber Monday - the traditional kick-off to the online holiday shopping season - and the subsequent weeks will be the real test for how online retailers fare this season. That said, this is a very encouraging start."

Coupon sites are also heating up, says comScore, finding that the sites registered 3% more hits on Black Friday over last year with 3.3 million visitors.

Today is Cyber Monday, so we'll likely see the release of similar data from today representing the continuing growth of online sales.