The Monday after Thanksgiving has become another day for online retailers to pitch sales to customers. But it looks like some retailers won’t need to rely as heavily on the so-called “Cyber Monday” sales.

Black Friday was fab, according to many reports.

Aliso Viejo’s Buy.com said today that Friday was its “Best Black Friday in Company History.” The company surpassed last year’s record Black Friday sales. In a statement, the company also mentioned that its Marketplace of third-party sellers had its biggest day as well, making up 30 percent of the site’s total orders that day, or 120 percent more orders than last year.

Amazon.com had several “lightning deals” throughout the day as a way to keep customers checking back with the site. The company is taking the same tactic for today’s deals in order to keep customers checking back on the site. No word on how sales went but Amazon just announced that its e-book reader Kindle had its best-ever sales month in November.

But even as shoppers apparently purchased more than last year, they didn’t necessarily spend more. Marketwatch is reporting that key retail stocks are down because average holiday spending fell 7 percent to $343.

So, maybe the deals are better this year? I, personally, couldn’t help but stock up on Blu-ray Discs on Black Friday as many dropped to $10. And, as many readers know, this is the year of the $99 Blu-ray player and in some cases, players were even much less.

Gadgetress tip:
CamelCamelCamel tracks how prices on individual products have changed over time at Amazon, Best Buy, Newegg, Overstock and others.

Analysts are saying that Cyber Monday, a made-up holiday for web retailers, doesn’t have the momentum it once did. As a day online stores would attract customers as they head back at work, Cyber Monday has been hurt by retailers who start their promotions earlier.

Still, the idea of losing out on a $99 Beatles Rock Band at Amazon or the $280 Acer netbook at Buy.com today will be distracting for workers everywhere.

Cyber Monday, of course, is just another day for retailers to sell stuff. It’s apparently worth it for retailers as pretty much every online seller today has a special Cyber Monday sales page. Retailers get a lot of free publicity from deal sites and news reports. Consumers hopefully get a great bargain if they order by midnight. Dell.com‘s special Cyber Monday page includes a $279 Mini 10v netbook at a $119 discount. Others, like Toshiba’s store, are  either not working (as of 9:56 a.m.) or are swamped by customers.

The Consumer Electronics Association said that electronics sales grew 6 percent on Black Friday, compared to the year ago’s decline when consumers were watching their budgets a bit closer. The organization’s survey of customers also found that 40 percent of shoppers believed traffic at stores and malls was heavier than last year and nearly 80 percent believed it was as busy, if not more so. CEA is sticking to its predictions that hot products this year are notebooks, portable MP3 players and flat-panel TVs.

“Results from this weekend suggest consumer technology will be the must-have gift this holiday and will lead economic recovery in 2010,” said Gary Shapiro, CEA’s President and CEO.

Web-traffic tracker comScore offered the most specific numbers: Web retailers on Black Friday made $595 million in online sales, an 11 percent increase from last year. On that day, Amazon.com was the most popular site to visit, followed by Walmart.com, Apple.com, Target.com and BestBuy.com.

Shoppers, as always, are really just looking for deals and 3.3 million made their way to a coupon or deal site before the big day, helping the deal sites grow 17 percent from a year ago. See comScore’s full report HERE.

From the web:

• More shoppers hit stores but spend less (Wall Street Journal)
• Black Friday results: Minamal growth (BloggingStocks.com)
• Retail Season starts stingily (Baltimore Sun)

To see what our Deals Diva is spotting today, check out our OC Deals blog. Recent posts:

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.