High Hopes for Cyber Monday

cyber-monday.pngCyber Monday is finally here, the day when everyone can continue this weekend’s shopping spree online. Not that you had to wait until today. Online sales on “Black Friday,” the day after Thanksgiving, were up 22 percent over last year to $531 million, says comScore. Today’s e-commerce take is expected to be $700 million, bringing the total spent since November 1st to $10 billion. That’s about the same as all physical U.S. retail stores made on Friday alone ComScore expects online sales for this holiday season to total $30 billion, or 7.5 percent of consumer retail spending, when all is said and done.

And according to a survey conducted by Shop.org, 72 million Americans are expected to shop online today. It is not clear from the survey if those people will actually be making purchases, or just browsing.

CrunchGear lists some of today’s CyberDeals here. Even Google Checkout is getting in on the deal action, offering discounts at online retailers who use Checkout. BowlingBall.com or Cufflinks Depot, anyone? I didn’t think so.

Update: Seems like some e-tailers can’t handle the online stampede. Yahoo’s checkout system is suffering outages, and Sears’ site is down altogether. (Anyone noticing any other outages or slowdowns today, please report in comments).

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Update 2: ComScore reports that online sales for Cyber Monday came in at $733 million, based on its panel.