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A Shopping Day Invented for the Web Comes of Age

An Amazon warehouse in Swansea, Wales, last week. The Monday after Thanksgiving was Amazon.com’s busiest day  last year.Credit...Matt Cardy/Getty Images

Cyber Monday may have started as a made-up occasion to give underdog e-commerce sites jealous of Black Friday a day of their own, but it has become an undeniably real thing — surprising even the people who invented it.

Last year was the first time that the Monday after Thanksgiving was the biggest online shopping day of the year by sales, and the first day that online spending passed $1 billion, according to comScore, a research company that measures Web use. On this Monday, early sales reports indicated that it could again be the best day of the season for e-commerce companies.

Though comScore did not release official sales figures on Monday, it said it expected e-commerce sites to reach $1.2 billion in sales, which would be a 17 percent increase over last year. IBM Benchmark, which tracks e-commerce sales, said they were up 15 percent.

“We believe that Cyber Monday is definitely going to be the biggest shopping day of 2011 online,” said Eric Best, chief executive of Mercent, which does online advertising and e-commerce on third-party marketplaces like Amazon.com for 400 brands, including Zappos.com and HSN.

Still, e-commerce analysts cautioned that strong Cyber Monday sales did not necessarily promise a merry online shopping season in a dreary economy. Instead, shoppers could be seeking deals because they are financially struggling.

“I don’t think that what happened is any telltale sign that people are breaking out their wallets,” said Sucharita Mulpuru, e-commerce analyst at Forrester Research. “A happy Web season doesn’t mean the economy is improving, just that people are becoming more mature from a technology standpoint and more savvy about finding good deals.”

Some online retailers took a rosier view.

“I don’t think we’re just pulling sales forward,” said Peter Cobb, co-founder and senior vice president of eBags. “I do think it’s a sign of a long, extended holiday season.”

Over all, online sales are expected to increase 15 percent this holiday season, more than last year and significantly more than the 2.8 percent increase expected offline. Shoppers spent about 38 percent of their total weekend budget online, a slight increase over last year, according to the National Retail Federation. On Black Friday, traditionally a bricks-and-mortar shopping day, people spent $816 million online, 26 percent more than last year, comScore said.

But many shoppers held out for Monday, when they expected deep discounts online. Seventy-eight percent of e-commerce sites offered promotions, according to Shop.org, an industry group. Almost half offered discounts, and a third had free shipping.

“We were all surprised last year when we saw it turned out to be the biggest day of the season,” said Gian Fulgoni, chairman of comScore and an e-commerce expert. “But more and more retailers have become a part of the Cyber Monday kickoff, more and more consumers are aware of it and know there are special deals coming — and you put that together and you’ve got an important day.”

EBags, which offered 30 percent off handbags and luggage on Monday, said as of 7 p.m. Eastern time that sales were up 45 percent over last year, the biggest day in its history. Wayfair, one of the biggest online home goods retailers, reported a 30 percent increase in revenue midday, while sales at Ideeli, the flash sale site, were up 40 percent. Etsy, the online marketplace for homemade goods, said sales were up 80 percent.

Mobile shopping drove online sales on Monday, because people returning to work after the holiday shopped on their lunch break or under the conference table in a meeting, said Claudia Lombana, shopping specialist at eBay. As of 2 p.m. Monday, PayPal recorded a sixfold increase in mobile sales compared with last year.

“It shows the incredible lift of this day,” said Mr. Cobb. “This will be the biggest day of the season, the year and actually the history of the company.”

Still, there are naysayers who view the day as more hype than reality. At Blue Nile, the online jeweler, the last day for free shipping by Christmas remains the biggest sales day, said Mark Vadon, Blue Nile’s chairman.

“The majority of consumers are procrastinators and they’ll wait as long as they can,” he said. “Cyber Monday is the start of the wave, not the top of the wave.”

The day is nevertheless important, Mr. Vadon said, because it is the first time online retailers collect substantial data on where they will need more inventory and where they should offer promotions during the crucial holiday season.

Many retailers had such high hopes for the day that they tried to expand it. Toys “R” Us offered Cyber Monday deals on Sunday night and will continue them through the week, as will Target, which went so far as to offer Cyber Monday deals in September.

“We are pleased with the reaction to our online sales, and are excited about the start of Cyber Week at Target.com,” Lee Henderson, a Target spokesman, said Monday.

Cyber Monday was dreamed up in 2005 by Shop.org as a marketing ploy to kick off online holiday shopping. More people had high-speed Internet at work, the thinking went, the easier to shop with. But the day was far from the biggest shopping day of the holiday season, coming in at No. 12, according to comScore.

Still, by 2007, despite the prevalence of high-speed Internet in homes, three-quarters of retailers were running Cyber Monday promotions, and shoppers and the media had latched on to the day as a new tradition.

“It was crazy, not what we were expecting,” said Ellen Davis, vice president of the National Retail Federation, which includes Shop.org.

Now, retailers, hoping to stand out, are borrowing Shop.org’s formula to invent their own days.

You might have missed Sofa Sunday, which Catalog Spree, an iPad app with retailers’ catalogs, has nicknamed the Sunday after Thanksgiving, when it predicted people would shop on tablets on their sofas. Coming soon are Mobile Sunday, which PayPal christened the second Sunday in December, and Free Shipping Day on Dec. 16, brought to you by FreeShipping.org. And beware of Red Tuesday, which the Association of Independent Consumer Credit Counseling Agencies warns will hit shoppers who go into debt on Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

At Amazon — where Cyber Monday last year edged out the last day with free shipping by Christmas as its busiest day — deals included a $500 KitchenAid mixer for $260, a $599 Panasonic Camcorder for $299 and a $299 Microsoft Xbox 360 with games for $199. Gilt, the flash sale site, had new sales every three hours on Monday, including a chartered Virgin America flight for 145 friends for $60,000.

“The retailers are driving a lot of this,” said Mitch Spolan, senior vice president for national sales at LivingSocial, which showed national television and radio ads through Monday to push its promotions. “Last year it was the biggest day of the year, and as retailers know that, they compete. It’s a sport.”

And Ms. Mulpuru said: “Just like Thanksgiving weekend shopping is a ritual in America, when people go with their families to look for deals, as soon as they go to the office on Monday they look online.” She added, “It’s almost ceremonial.”

Stephanie Clifford contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section B, Page 2 of the New York edition with the headline: A Shopping Day Invented for the Web Has Arrived, With Surging Sales Figures. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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