Some U.S. online retailers extended Cyber Monday sales through the week as shoppers spent a projected $1.2 billion on the year's biggest online shopping day.
Amazon.com touted "Cyber Monday Deals Week" on its Web site; Walmart.com promoted "Cyber Week Online Specials" with "new items added daily"; and Montgomery Ward said its Cyber Monday discounts of as much as 55 percent on "Generous Santa" items would continue as long as supplies lasted, a United Press International spot check indicated.
Online shopping traffic was up 43 percent Monday from last year, said content delivery network Akamai Technologies Inc.. Online sales were up 18 percent over Cyber Monday 2010, said IBM Corp.'s Smarter Commerce initiative.
Mobile users made up 7.7 percent of all online sales, up from 2.2 percent last year, IBM Corp.'s online data division Coremetrics reported.
Overall, Cyber Monday -- created by the Shop.org division of the National Retail Federation in 2005 to persuade people to shop online the Monday immediately following Black Friday -- was on track to generate a record $1.2 billion, up from 2010's $1.03 billion, Internet marketing-research firm ComScore said.
Electronics were the most popular items this year, with sales up 26 percent from last year and products such as flat-screen TVs and digital cameras leading the pack, shopping comparison site PriceGrabber.com said.
Even with record online traffic levels, retailers appeared to have pulled off Monday's shopping flurry without a glitch, Web performance expert Steve Tack of Compuware Corp. told USA Today.
"The industry has done a pretty good job of getting a stable site that is better at dealing with the demands placed on it," said Tack, chief technology officer for Web site and applications performance. "People only have so much patience. If a site is not loading fast enough, they'll abandon it."
JCPenney.com was the fastest-responding Web site, followed by Apple.com and Dell.com, Compuware said.
Sears.com, BestBuy.com and Amazon.com had the fastest mobile responses, Compuware said.