U.S. online retailers saw improvement in their sales during the first two weeks of December, when compared with the same period a year ago.
Sales rose 6% from Dec. 1-Dec. 14 2008, according to the Coremetrics Benchmark, an online commerce tracking service which incorporates data from more than 500 U.S. retailers.
But there has been a slowdown this year in terms of order volume. Average order volume has dropped 6.7% from its peak on this year’s Cyber Monday, the first day most businesses are open after Thanksgiving.
Cyber Monday is considered a bellwether for online sales as employees take advantage of their company’s faster broadband connections when shopping.
According to Coremetrics, the average number of items per order showed modest gains, with an increase of 2%. This number, combined with the drop in AOV indicates that shoppers remain extremely value conscious, willing to purchase more items, but not spend more money per order.
The number of new consumers shopping online was down nearly 8% from its Cyber Monday surge, according to Coremetrics.
“December online retail sales have been strong, anchored by good momentum on Cyber Monday, which delivered the strongest online sales results of the year so far,” said John Squire, Coremetrics’ chief strategy officer said in a statement. “However, sales seem to have peaked on Cyber Monday, largely due to the aggressive and extremely attractive promotions and special offers that many retailers offered early in the season. Consumers seem to have done the bulk of their shopping earlier than in past seasons and we anticipate that sales will stay largely flat through the rest of December as shoppers focus on last-minute gifts and not on big-ticket items.”
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