• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, January 10, 2005

Internet retailers got a big boost from last-minute shoppers, who increased their online year-over-year retail spending by more than 50 percent in the last two weeks of December, according to a comScore report released Monday. The strong sales at the end of the year drove total online retail spending numbers for the two-month holiday season to $15.8 billion--up from $12.3 billion in 2003.

comScore attributed the online end-of-year spike to a combination of later shipping deadlines, brick-and-mortar shortages of popular gifts such as Apple's iPod, and increased broadband at home. Another factor was the increased use of virtual gift cards--or gift certificates purchased online and e-mailed to recipients, said comScore spokesman Graham Mudd.

For the entire year, online consumer spending on retail swelled to $66.5 billion--up 26 percent from last year. When online travel is included, the figure is nearly double--$117.4 billion.

When it came to luring eyeballs, the biggest winner year-over-year was Blockbuster.com, which created an online DVD delivery service in August. For the last two months of the year, the video rental giant's traffic ballooned 387 percent to an average of 2.8 million unique visitors weekly--up from 593 million in 2003.