Cyber Monday likely was busiest online sales day

Associated Press

NEW YORK

Americans clicked away on their computers and smartphones for deals on Cyber Monday, which is expected to be the biggest online shopping day in history.

Shoppers are expected to spend $1.5 billion on Cyber Monday, up 20 percent from last year, according to research firm comScore. That would make it not only the biggest online shopping day of the year, but the biggest since comScore started tracking shoppers’ online buying habits in 2001.

Online shopping was up 26.6 percent on Cyber Monday compared with the same time period a year ago, according to figures released Monday evening by IBM Benchmark, which tracks online sales. Sales from mobile devices, which include tablets, rose 10.2 percent. The group does not track dollar-amount sales.

The strong start to Cyber Monday, a term coined in 2005 by a shopping trade group that noticed people were doing a lot of shopping on their work computers on the Monday after Thanksgiving, comes after overall online sales rose significantly during the four-day holiday shopping weekend that began Thanksgiving Day.

“Online’s piece of the holiday pie is growing every day, and all the key dates are growing with it,” said Forrester Research analyst Sucharita Mulpuru.