Holiday shoppers log on for Cyber Monday

For people who'd rather shop from their seat instead of being on their feet, today is your day. Known as Cyber Monday, today will be the busiest online shopping day of the year.

If you didn't want to camp out all night in a tent in front of your favorite store, like many here did, to get a great Black Friday deal, many stores will offer similar online specials today, including deep discounts and free shipping.

Last year consumers spent $887 million on Cyber Monday, according to digital business analytics company comScore.

Early holiday shopping indicates more people may be doing their holiday shopping online this year.

From Nov. 1 to 21, $9.01 billion was spent online, a 13 percent increase compared to the corresponding days last year, comScore reports.

Even on Black Friday, some shoppers stayed home and ordered their gifts online.

Shoppers this year also spent more per online purchase on Black Friday, according to the Web research firm Coremetrics. The average order rose to $190.80, a 12 percent increase over $170.19 on the same day last year.

"The season's off to a great start," said John Squire, Coremetrics vice president of strategy. "It really shows really strong consumer sentiment for buying and for going online."

Meanwhile, PayPal reported an increase of about 27 percent in payment volume on Black Friday compared with last year. The eBay Inc. unit did not release a dollar amount for the sales it processed.

Shopping on smart phones remained a small, though growing, piece of the pie. Coremetrics said about 5.6 percent of people logged onto a retailer's website using a mobile device. That compares with less than 1 percent on last year's Black Friday, Squire said.

More dollars have shifted to online shopping over the years, but it's still a relatively small share of holiday spending, between 8 percent and 10 percent. Still many shoppers have converted to the comfort and convenience of browsing the Web for gifts.

Southeast Missourian business reporter Melissa Miller may be contacted at 388-3646 or mmiller@semissourian.com.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.