Cyber Monday business looks like it will come up big, bringing the heaviest online traffic of the year, according to Web watchers.
The value of the average shopping cart was up 15 to 20 percent compared with the same day in 2005.
The number of U.S. cybershoppers peaked at 2.1 million per minute at 4 p.m., a 17 percent increase from the peak of 1.8 million per minute a year earlier, according to Akamai Technologies, a measurement service that tracks some 270 large e-tail sites, including J.C. Penney, Victoria’s Secret, L.L. Bean and BestBuy.
There was a 15 percent increase in purchases transacted on the sites Akamai tracked. E-tail sites had an average cart value in the mid-$40 range. About one-third of the carts created were used to buy something.
“We believe the day really did live up to its hype,” Jeff Young, Akamai’s corporate communications director, said Tuesday. “It’s the heaviest traffic day we’ve seen so far this year. We expect it to be one of the five heaviest traffic days in 2006.”
Sites in the Hitwise Retail 100 pulling the biggest share of visits Monday were led by Amazon, which drew 12 percent, followed by Wal-Mart, 10 percent; Target, 5.5 percent; Overstock, 5.1 percent, and BestBuy, 4 percent.
Walmart.com tallied a 60 percent rise in visitors on Monday. The site, which is often the Web’s most heavily trafficked shopping destination, is expected to draw 25 million visitors this week, en route to a total of 700 million visits this year. Seven hundred million trips to the dot-com would mark a 40 percent surge compared with 2005.
“We anticipate a 40 to 60 percent traffic increase throughout the rest of the holiday season,” said Ravi Jariwala, a spokesman for Walmart.com. Although Jariwala declined to say how many shoppers have visited the Wal-Mart site in the year to date, he said that about 275 million visits are expected from November through January.
Promotions hawked at the Wal-Mart site Monday ranged from $326 HDTVs to a variety of items that could be shipped for 97 cents, including toys, video games, books, movies and home goods. Among the day’s bestsellers were a Barbie pink acoustic guitar for $20, a combination of three PlayStation2 or Xbox video game titles for $25 and a George women’s cashmere cable crewneck sweater for $35.
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“I divide the Christmas season into two periods — when the tide starts coming in and when the tsunami hits,” said Patrick Byrne, chairman, chief executive officer and founder of Overstock.com, a pure-play survivor of the dot-com bust. “For us, the tsunami hit on Black Friday, then Cyber Monday was bigger.” Byrne said he expects about five more “breakers will hit,” ending around Dec. 14.
It was a different story at NeimanMarcus.com, where spokeswoman Ginger Reeder said in a statement, “Cyber Monday has become just another holiday season day in our ‘nonpromotional’ world.”
“With the increase in DSL lines in private homes, we don’t see the jump that used to happen on Mondays when customers had access to high-speed service [primarily] through their offices,” Reeder said. “Our peak shopping day will come later in December.”