This year’s Cyber Monday biggest ever, firms say

Editor's Note: This story was updated on Dec. 5 to reflect that smartphones drove nearly 20 percent of online traffic and tablets nearly 12 percent this Cyber Monday.

New York--Online retail sales reached new highs on Cyber Monday, and purchases made via mobile devices played a big part in the increase, data collected on the day shows.

According to Reston, Va.-based digital metrics firm comScore, Cyber Monday spending from desktop computers alone--not even counting money spent via smartphones and tablets--reached $1.74 billion, up 18 percent year-over-year. That makes it the heaviest online spending day in history and the second day this holiday season, in addition to Black Friday, where consumers spent more than $1 billion online.

ComScore predicted that consumers would spend another $200 million via mobile devices on Cyber Monday, meaning that, if the prediction holds true, the day’s spending will total nearly $2 billion.

Meanwhile, data from the IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark, which did not provide a dollar figure on spending for the day, indicates that Cyber Monday’s total sales grew 21 percent year-over-year and represented the highest single-day value in history, even while the average order value fell 1 percent to $128.77.

Cyber Monday capped off the highest five-day sales period to date, with the five-day span from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday growing 17 percent as compared with the prior-year period.

According to IBM, retail purchases made via mobile this year were up 55 percent year-over-year, to total more than 17 percent of all online sales. Smartphones drove nearly 20 percent of online traffic, as compared to the nearly 12 percent from tablets.

IBM's Digital Analytics Benchmark tracks retail transactions from about 800 retail sites.

As of Tuesday afternoon, the National Retail Federation (NRF) had not released any information about Cyber Monday but the retail trade organization earlier predicted that more than 131 million shoppers would go online for Cyber Monday, up from the 129 million who participated last year.

NRF data for the Thanksgiving weekend also showed that the Internet was the second most-shopped destination. A total of 42 percent of consumers said they shopped online over the weekend; the only place consumers went to more were department stores, visited by 54 percent of shoppers.