Holiday Season off to Strong Start for Online Merchants

Black Friday and Cyber Monday have ignited a promising start to the 2011 holiday spending season that appears to signal a revival in consumer spirits following a deep recession and wobbly recovery, according to a number of statistical indicators that have been released this week.

Transactions on Monday at some of the largest online merchants totaled 4.89 million, up fully 60% over the 3.06 million recorded on Cyber Monday last year, according to Chase Paymentech Solutions LLC, the nation’s largest processor of e-commerce transactions. Chase Paymentech tracks settlement volume at 50 of the 250 largest online retailers as ranked by Internet Retailer magazine for its Pulse Index report. Average tickets at these merchants also spiked on Monday, from $68 last year to $74, the Index reports.

Cyber Monday is so-called because in recent years many consumers have gone to the Web on the Monday after Thanksgiving to do holiday shopping, resulting in a welcome boost for online merchants. But, as was the case last year, Internet transactions and sales actually soared even higher on Tuesday, with transactions jumping to 7.24 million, up 15% over the 6.3 million on the same Tuesday in 2009. Tuesday’s average tickets, however, dropped to $55 from $60 last year, indicating some consumer caution with respect to bigger-ticket spending.

Activity was similarly robust on Black Friday, a traditionally big shopping day on the day after Thanksgiving for both brick-and-mortar and online merchants. Transactions for the Index’s online retailers totaled 4.17 million, nearly double last year’s 2.23 million, with no let-up on Saturday.

Indeed, consumers are clearly opening their wallets online. For the season so far, Chase Paymentech reports transactions are up 35.5%, with a 21.9% increase in sales volume. Average tickets are 10% lower. The Index began tracking seasonal activity Nov. 3.

Chase Paymentech’s results are mirrored in other reports. A group of about 500 online merchants that supply data to IBM Corp.’s Coremetrics unit saw sales increase 19.4% on Monday compared to Cyber Monday last year. Here, though, average order value jumped up, from $180.03 to $194.89. The large group of merchants tracked by Coremetrics, a marketing-analytics company, embraces categories like jewelry and other luxury merchandise that can drive up average tickets.

Interestingly, mobile phones accounted for 3.9% of site traffic and 2.25% of sales on Monday. Mobile activity on Friday was higher, at 5.56% of traffic and 3.18% of sales.

Similarly, same-seller online sales for more than 100 sites and shopping destinations tracked by Mercent Corp. ballooned 34% on Monday compared to the same day in 2009, the vendor of online-marketing technology reports. Black Friday sales were up 30%. Same-seller volume for sites using Amazon.com Inc.’s “Selling on Amazon” marketplace jumped up 75% on Monday. The same increase for merchants using Google Inc.’s Google Product Search program was 37%, Mercent says.