Cyber Monday, November 28, 2006, was a record setter in many areas. Shopping.com reported their best day so far in 2006 with traffic to their merchant partners up by 40 percent from the same day last year. Their most clicked-on product was the Black, 4GB, Apple iPod Nano. Other popular items were, not surprisingly, TMX Elmo, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

According to Josh Silverman, General Manager of Shopping.com, "There's more competition among online merchants than ever which is great for shoppers as many of them are rolling out more incentives and discounts this year. In fact, according to our research, 20 of the top 50 merchants ranked by Internet Retailer are offering shoppers free shipping this holiday."

This could explain eBay's free listing upgrades incentive run over the past two days for sellers who offer free shipping, and the prominent link on the homepage to search for items that offer free shipping. It should be noted that eBay owns Shopping.com.

But it is not just one site that experienced higher traffic and sales on Cyber Monday. ComScore Networks reported an increase of all online sales exceeding their prediction of $600 million: they were 8 million too low. The increase in sales year-over-year is a whopping 26 percent. And Cyber Monday usually isn't the busiest shopping day in the season. (Note: ComScore's data does not include any auction or travel sales.)

eBay reported Cyber Monday traffic reached 12 million unique visitors. eBay has not released their total sales for Cyber Monday, but it appears that some items did better than others, according to eBay Marketplace Research.

Surprisingly, the average selling price for the TMX Elmo was down $4.73 on Cyber Monday, versus the previous two weeks (Nov 15 - Nov 27); the number of sales were also down 12 percent over the average daily sales from the previous two weeks.

Xbox sales were way down too, with only 160 sales on Cyber Monday, compared to the average daily sales from the previous two weeks of 294 per day. But the average price only dropped a couple of dollars from $403.67 to $401.92.

Other products had a better day. The iPod Nano (all storage sizes) had a high increase on Cyber Monday with average prices at $173.42 up from $169.83. But the volume of sales is much higher with a 14% increase from 196 average daily sales to 228 on Cyber Monday. The iPod Shuffle also did well, increasing the selling price by $5.41 and holding firm with the average daily sales.

Last week we mentioned the website CyberMonday.com (http://www.cybermonday.com) where you can compare prices, shipping terms, etc., from a variety of online sites. On Cyber Monday, 300,000 people visited the site to do just that.

In summary, it appears that overall sales across all online sites are doing well and are hitting and exceeding the projected 24% increase in sales from last year. It appears that although some products didn't do as well on eBay, others did much better, so it evens out to a good Cyber Monday all around.

http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=1087

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Lissa McGrath is a full-time freelance writer and the author of 20 Questions To Ask Before Selling On eBay (Career Press, 2006). She is also the copy editor of 6 other eBay related books. Lissa can be reached at lissa@lissamcgrath.com or through her website http://www.lissamcgrath.com.