Free Shipping Day bumps up online spending to $38.7B

The holiday season to date has increased 16% over last year

Did you get all your holiday shopping done and out of the way? Oh yeah? You even made your own wrapping paper and designed your own gift tags, you say? And you’re including a neatly wrapped bundle of homemade biscotti with each gift to show everyone just how much you care? Well f*ck off, I’m not talking to you.

I’m talking to those who—like me—will be giving out a lot of IOUs this year because they bought all their gifts online late Sunday night and missed the shipping window. Merry Christmas, guys, you’re all getting personalized Christmas ornaments in mid-January.

But there were lots of people who took advantage of Free Shipping Day on Monday, December 17.  ComScore reported Monday that Free Shipping Day prompted a surge in online spending and bumped the season-to-date growth rate to 16% over the same period last year. Since November 1, $38.7 billion has been spent online.

This has been a pretty strong season for e-commerce.  Last week, comScore reported the heaviest online shopping week in history, with four individual days exceeding the $1 billion mark. Cyber Monday 2010 was the first time in history that online spending surpassed $1 billion in a single day. But with four days busting past the $1 billion mark last week, it marked the first time that online spending reached $7 billion in a single week.

“We typically do not see such heavy spending this late in the season, but the fact that Free Shipping Day occurred on a Monday, combined with the fact that so many retailers extended their promotions into the middle of the week—with guaranteed shipping by Christmas—helped deliver an encouraging late-season surge,” said comScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni, in a statement.

Last week saw a huge uptick in spending, with consumers spending $3.7 billion online from December 17 to December 21—marking a 53% increase over the same week last year.

So far this year, Cyber Monday still stands as the heaviest online shopping day with $1.46 billion spent online, but a few other days have come pretty close. Tuesday, December 4 was the second heaviest with $1.36 billion spent online, followed by Monday, December 10 (Green Monday), with $1.28 billion, and Tuesday, November with $1.26 billion.  Mondays tend to be the heaviest days for online spending, according to comScore. 

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