Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving in the United States, traditionally marks the beginning of the retail holiday shopping season. Cyber Monday, the first Monday after Thanksgiving, is traditionally the day that online retailers look to as the holiday-shopping kick-off day for ecommerce sales. Research firms began releasing reports on Black Friday 2008's performance over the weekend.

According to the National Retail Federation (NRF)'s 2008 Black Friday Weekend survey, conducted by BIGresearch, more than 172 million shoppers visited stores and websites over Black Friday weekend, up from 147 million shoppers last year. (Spending data includes Thursday, Friday, Saturday and projected spending for Sunday.) NRF continues to project that holiday sales will rise 2.2 percent this year to $470.4 billion.

ComScore reported Black Friday ecommerce sales of $534 million, up 1 percent from a year ago, and ecommerce sales of $288 million on November 27 (Thanksgiving Day), up 6 percent from last year. ComScore also reported that ecommerce spending for the first 28 days of the November - December 2008 holiday season were down 4 percent, to $10.41 billion.

And, according to Comscore, Cyber Monday has historically proven to be an accurate bellwether for the overall performance of the online holiday shopping season. "While the year-over-year growth rates for individual online spending days vary quite significantly throughout the season, during the past few years Cyber Monday has been within a few percentage points of the final holiday season growth rate."

Shop.org reported that 84.6 million consumers plan to shop online from home or at work on Cyber Monday (December 1), according to a survey conducted this weekend by BIGresearch. That's up from 72.0 million in 2007 and 60.7 million in 2006. And according to its eHoliday Survey conducted by Shopzilla, 83.7 percent of retailers will have a special promotion for Cyber Monday, up from 72.2 percent last year. The most popular promotions are expected to be specific deals (38.8%), email campaigns (32.7%), and one-day sales (24.5%). Additionally, nearly one-fourth of retailers (22.5%) will offer free shipping on all purchases.

eBay's payment service PayPal reported transactions were up 34% on Black Friday compared to 2007 with a 26% increase in online payment volume. PayPal's Payflow Gateway data shows that on Black Friday, consumers shopped the most during lunch time, with 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM being the busiest purchasing time for the past three years.

eBay did not release traffic or sales figure, but said the Nintendo Wii Console was the most popular product across all of its categories on Black Friday. eBay sold 3,171 Wii consoles on Friday, and 1,059 Wii Fit.

Comparison shopping-engine PriceGrabber, a part of Experian, said economic conditions motivated value-driven consumers this year, leading to an 11 percent increase in traffic on its site year-over-year on Black Friday. It released the top 10 categories and percent growth over Black Friday 2007:

• 1) Women's Boots - 203%
• 2) Watches - 202%
• 3) Blu-ray/HD-DVD Players - 147%
• 4) Women's Sleep & Lounge Wear - 415%
• 5) Games & Puzzles - 151%
• 6) Women's Jackets - 110%
• 7) Music - 96%
• 8) Headphones - 103%
• 9) Women's Dresses - 107%
• 10) Women's Casual Shoes - 143%