• by Mark Walsh , November 27, 2007

Despite the threat of recession and reduced holiday sales, online retailers enjoyed spending and traffic gains over last year on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving known for heavy shopping.

Online buying on Black Friday increased 22% over 2006 to $531 million, according to Web measurement firm comScore--with sales of video games and consoles nearly tripling. The bump in online sales last Friday also surpassed the 17% increase seen during the first three weeks of November.

Andrew Lipsman, a senior analyst at comScore, called the Black Friday increase over season-to-date growth "a sign of positive online spending momentum." comScore has forecast overall online holiday spending (excluding travel) of $29.5 billion, up 20% from 2006.

Chase Paymentech Solutions, the largest process of Internet transactions, reported a 38% increase in sales volume activity over the weekend, including a nearly 40% surge on Black Friday itself. Sunday's online sales were especially strong at $82.8 million--the second-highest one-day total for 2007, based on its Pulse Index.

Separately, Nielsen Online released traffic figures for Black Friday showing a 10t% jump over last year to a group of more than 120 representative online retailers including Amazon, Best Buy and Dell Inc. Consumer electronics and computer hardware and software were the hottest product categories in terms of traffic growth from 2006.

Those gains were also reflected in the types of sites which had the biggest traffic gains--electronics retailers Best Buy and Circuit City. The most popular e-commerce stores on Black Friday were those run by InterActive Corp. (including HSN.com) and Amazon, which both had more than 5 million unique visitors, and Wal-Mart, with 3.6 million.

Based on its analysis of online discussions on blogs and other forums, Nielsen found that discounts and special deals played a big part in galvanizing consumer interest in Black Friday. People shared information about what to buy where, as well as the overall shopping experience. Consumer discussions were especially detailed around electronics products such as plasma TVs and the Nintendo Wii.

By comparison, traffic to brick-and-mortar stores from Thanksgiving through Sunday was up only 4.8% from last year, according to a survey conducted for the National Retail Foundation. The study also showed that spending offline on average dipped to $348 from $360 last year as shoppers focused on heavily discounted items such as digital photo frames and laptops.

Forecasts of an economic slowdown amid housing industry woes and warnings of weaker holiday sales from big retailers such as Wal-Mart and Macy's had lowered expectations for the season. But online retailers may be more impervious to the downturn because Web shoppers tend to be more affluent than the general population, according to Sucharita Mulpuru, a retail analyst at Forrester Research. "They're not the type of consumers to get nervous about rising gas prices," she says.

The biggest factors driving online sales are convenience and selection. "People can find things often sold out in stores and have things delivered in a relatively painless way without having to deal with crowds and parking," she says.

Analysts expect the strong Black Friday showing online to carry over into Cyber Monday, the Monday after Thanksgiving promoted since 2005 as the online equivalent to Black Friday. comScore projects $700 million in spending on Cyber Monday, which would set a record for one-day sales online.

Shop.org, the retailing trade group which coined Cyber Monday, expects 72 million Americans to shop online on Nov. 26--up from 61 million in 2006. Last year, Shop.org created CyberMonday.com, which features deals and promotions fro 550 retailers, including one-day incentives tied to the occasion.