Online retail sales were jumping for "Cyber Monday," the key Web
shopping day following the US Thanksgiving holiday weekend, a survey
showed.
IBM said its cloud-based digital analytics platform, tracking
shopping in real time, showed sales up 27 percent from last year as of
2300 GMT.
"All signs point to Cyber Monday being a banner year," IBM said on its Digital Analytics Benchmark blog.
"The multiscreen shopper is out in full force this year."
The
number of consumers using a mobile device to visit a retailer's site
was 20 percent, and 10 percent of consumers were using their mobile
device to make a purchase, according to IBM.
"Apple continues to
be a big winner with the iPhone driving more retail shopping than any
other device with traffic reaching eight percent versus 6.5 percent and
5.6 percent for iPad and Android respectively," the blog post said.
The
company based its data on "the industry's only cloud-based Web
analytics platform that tracks more than a million e-commerce
transactions a day."
IBM offered no specific forecast for Monday
sales but on Sunday, the research firm comScore predicted retailers
would take in $1.5 billion for the day, a jump of 20 percent.
Cyber
Monday became a tradition several years ago, when consumers would wait
until the Monday after the holiday weekend to shop using high-speed
connections in their offices. Retailers typically offer big discounts on
items ranging from electronics to apparel, but many have now extended
these to cover the full weekend.
IBM's Craig Hayman said that
although many consumers now have high-speed Internet at home, "Cyber
Monday is more important than ever."
"Cyber Monday represents the
new commerce reality the shopping experience as it is lived by people
everywhere," he said in a blog post.
The hot Monday sales came
after surveys showed heavy online spending for "Black Friday," the day
after the US Thanksgiving holiday.
Online shoppers spent a record
of $1.042 billion on Friday, surpassing last year's Black Friday haul by
26 percent, according to comScore.
A total of 57.3 million
Americans visited online retail sites on Black Friday, representing an
increase of 18 percent versus a year ago, the firm said.