Holiday Internet Sales Up by 15% and Other Record Breaking 2011 Holiday Stats
As many marketing experts predicted, online shopping maxed out with numbers coming in higher than any prior year. eMarketer wasn’t far off when they predicted that holiday sales—with the holiday time period being defined as November and December and sales to include all retail sales excluding online travel bookings—would increase by 16.8% for a total of $46.7 billion in sales.
A survey by ComScore showed that sales increased by 15.3% for web retailers from November 1 – December 26 compared to the same time period last year, equating to $35.27 billion compared to $30.9 billion last year.
As a local business owner, it’s worthwhile to take these numbers into consideration, in addition to the following stats:
- Holiday sales increased by 12% in 2010 from 2009.
- $32.6 billion totaled sales for full November to December measurement period in 2010.
- Cyber Monday—the Monday following Thanksgiving—was the biggest spending day during the 2011 November to December holiday period with total online retails sales topping 1.25 billion making it the heaviest online shopping day in history.
- Online purchasing of digital content and subscriptions accounted for more than 20% of sales on Christmas Day where the typical season-to-date daily average was 2.8% for that same category.
Thus, in spite of a questionable economy, the online market continues to thrive and see this significant increase. And it’s not a huge surprise if you understand what the Internet brings to the everyday consumer. The Internet has grown in a way that consumers appear to be more trustworthy of online purchasing given that businesses have taken the steps to help consumer feel more secure when handing over their bank or credit card information. Once getting over this security hurdle, surveys show that consumers turn to online shopping for its convenience and enticing online deals, to name a few of the reasons.
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