Cyber Monday Overtakes Black Friday as Ecommerce Flourishes

Move over Black Friday, Cyber Monday is where the action happens. Consumer spending is heading to the virtual high street as Christmas shoppers favour etailers over their bricks and mortar counterparts.

In the US, Black Friday, the Friday after Thanksgiving, has been traditionally known as the busiest shopping day of the year. Accounting folklore suggests it's the day each year when retailers make it out of the red.

Official comScore figures reported a spend of $595 billion in online spend on this day, an 11% increase on the same day last year.

But Black Friday's glory is fading. Figures out today hail Cyber Monday as the true indicator of how holiday spend will play out.

Coremetrics reports that Cyber Monday sales were up 14% this year. Consumers also bought 10% more items per order than they did on Black Friday, as etailers push online discounts like free shipping and gift cards to entice online customers.

In the UK, Cyber Monday saw £300 million spent online with Visa Europe dealing with around 1,600 transactions a minute, an increase of 25%. The peak times saw most shoppers snapping up their internet bargains in their lunch hour and then again after work at 7pm.

But it's not just the Cyber Monday effect that's making the big brands generous. It's pretty much the standard. With British retail heavyweights like Marks and Spencer, Debenhams and ASDA offering discounts and vouchers on Twitter the future of retail is rooted in ecommerce.

Let's just hope that delivery issues don't hamper Santa from delivering your goodies this year, although that pain may be eased by a combination of same-day delivery services and click-and-collect schemes, heck there's even (apparently false) rumours Amazon is getting in on the act.

This blog post is sponsored by Work @, a new feature from Chinwag Jobs lifting the lid on careers in digital media. This month highlights careers in ecommerce at Shop Direct.

PIcture courtesy of slowburn. Some rights reserved.