Cyber Monday Exceeded Expectations

Have you hugged your web host today? If not, you should, because your host played a key role in helping you garner your share of the most lucrative Cyber Monday in history. Online retailers set a record Monday with sales of $733 million.  The day’s much-anticipated online shopping turnout saw Web retailers notching a 21 percent gain over the same day last year, according to online metrics firm Com.Score.

Monday’s results easily met Com.Score’s prediction that sales would exceed $700 million. Customers who logged onto the internet to do holiday shopping on Cyber Monday were a bit more satisfied with their online experiences than they were in 2006, according to a new study by Ann Arbor-based ForeSee Results. Cyber Monday customer satisfaction was up 1.3% from the same day in 2006, according to Foresee. Online shoppers have spent $10.74 billion in total so far this holiday season, which comScore measures from Nov. 1. That’s 17 percent more than during the same period last year.

And yes Virginia there is a Santa Claus because the story just keeps getting better. Com.Score is predicting that several days this holiday season will see even heavier performances. “I think we can expect Monday, December 10, to be one of the bigger days, if not the biggest,” Com Score senior analyst Andrew Lipson told InternetNews.com.  That could be the day when ecommerce hits the $800 million mark. Last year, the day with the heaviest spending was Wednesday, December 13, with sales of $667 million.

Though Cyber Monday is not always the biggest online shopping day of the year, it is when retailers traditionally see the first major spike in holiday buyers and browsers.  Six of ComScore’s top 10 retail sites on Monday received more than twice their average daily traffic during the previous four weeks. Looking at the months of November and December together, ComScore projects online spending to hit $29.5 billion this year, which would be a 20 percent increase over the 2006 holiday season. If that figure holds, Cyber Monday would account for 2.5 percent of this year’s online holiday shopping. 

Web hosting provider lists some Cyber Monday highlights:

1. Other than an isolated hiccup or two, Cyber Monday was a record breaker with a $733 million in sales.
2. Amazon was the biggest winner in terms of traffic, with a 26 percent gain year-over-year.
3. 44 percent of Monday’s web suffers hit up either a retail site or a shopping engine.
4. 60 percent of online Monday’s bargain hunters were shopping while at the office.

Yahoo Couldn’t Cope

Despite overall positive experiences on Cyber Monday, Yahoo experienced some headaches of migrainic proportions. The first sign of trouble came about 6 a.m. when merchants first noticed problems completing transactions. At 8:31 a.m. Yahoo posted the first message on its Merchant Solutions website: "Some merchants are reporting that shoppers are receiving an error message indicating 'system unavailable' during the checkout process. We are aware of this issue and are currently investigating. More information will be provided as it becomes available."
It was only a matter of time before the web portal addressed the mob of angry merchants who missed out on sales. Here’s a snipped of the apology from the company blog: “We deeply regret the inconveniences caused to both our merchants and their shoppers. Our customers’ expectations were not met, nor were our own. We are moving mountains inside Yahoo! to find out why and how this happened, and to take steps to ensure it doesn’t happen again.  As for the future, rest assured that we are taking the necessary steps to prepare for the peak holiday selling season. We have technical and customer relations staff mobilized and ready to support our partners.”

While it’s not uncommon to experience hiccups when it comes to the web, having it happen to 40,000 ecommerce sites during the most successful online shopping day in history is a net nightmare to the tenth power. The long-term effects of the Yahoo glitch are yet to be seen. Many merchants are in a less-than-forgiving mood. “It’s been horrifying and it’s a loss of thousands and thousands of dollars,” noted Sara Schwimmer of New York who runs PopJudacia. “I can only imagine how many people gave up on my site because of frustration. There’s no telling how much business was lost.”
Another Yahoo merchant customer put it this way: “Absolute disaster for us. We were having a record weekend and now this.”   

Thousands of Yahoo stores could not make any sales during most of the day Monday because their shopping carts were down. Many of those shops have affiliate programs, so affiliates suffered a loss as well.

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