ComScore: Online sales heat up this week
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U.S. buyers shopped aggressively online on Monday and Tuesday of this week, spending significantly more than they did on the comparable days last year, according to comScore.Online retail spending hit $700 million on Monday, up 33 percent from last year, and $670 million on Tuesday, up 25 percent, the Web-monitoring company said Thursday.During the first 48 days of the holiday shopping season -- Nov. 1 to Dec. 18 -- U.S. shoppers have spent almost $25 billion in online retail purchases, up 19 percent from the same period last year, according to comScore.As Christmas day approaches, the intensity of online shopping will ease up, although late-shipping deals, in-store pickup options and price reductions should keep growth rates strong in the remainder of the holiday season, comScore said.The company expects online spending during the holidays to reach $29.5 billion, which would represent a 20 percent increase over the 2006 season.Meanwhile, Nielsen Online said Wednesday that a majority of online shoppers it surveyed reported being either &quot;very satisfied&quot; or &quot;somewhat satisfied&quot; with the customer support they received from online shopping Web sites.Nielsen Online&#39;s survey found that of the 46 percent of respondents who had posted or planned to post reviews about their online shopping experience, 88 percent said those reviews were, or would be, positive.Netflix topped the survey&#39;s customer satisfaction list, having been rated &quot;very satisfied&quot; by 90.3 percent of respondents, and was followed by comparison-shopping site NexTag.com (87 percent), giant e-tailer Amazon.com (86.6 percent), Yahoo Shopping (84.3 percent) and Kohls.com (84.1 percent). Rounding out the top 10 were Barnesandnoble.com, HomeDepot.com, Circuitcity.com, eBay.com, and JCPenney.com.On the other end of the spectrum, sites that in recent days have been flagged for buckling under the strong holiday-season traffic include Mastercard.com and Macys.com.Macys.com&#39;s home page faced slowdowns throughout Tuesday, taking, at its worst, about 38 seconds to load, compared with the usual 2 seconds, according to Web site uptime and availability tracker Gomez.Apparently, while experiencing availability problems, Macys.com has been serving up a page telling shoppers that the site is crowded and that they have to wait until traffic decreases in order to be let in. An apparent screenshot of this page was posted by The Consumerist blog on Tuesday.Meanwhile, Mastercard.com has racked up downtime of almost five hours between Nov. 9 and Dec. 20, equivalent to uptime of 99.5 percent for that period, according to Pingdom, which also tracks Web site performance. As such, Mastercard.com has performed significantly worse than sites from competing credit-card companies like Discover, Visa, Diners Club, and American Express, all of which have had uptime above 99.9 percent during this period, Pingdom said Thursday.Neither Macy&#39;s nor MasterCard immediately responded to requests for comment.
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By Andria Cheng  U.S. retailers like Wal-Mart Stores and Federated Department Stores are pushing Internet sales this holiday season with Web site overhauls and increased investment - and for good reason.
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eBay, PayPal, Microsoft and others -- is increasing. The report gave greater focus to the server side of
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U.S. consumer Web spending rose 30 percent on the Monday after Thanksgiving, which is traditionally seen as the start of the online holiday shopping season, comScore Networks said on Wednesday.
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Internet retailer Amazon.com reported record holiday sales, coaxed by hot demand for electronic consumer goods such as the Apple iPod music player.
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Vendors and researchers have detected various new trends at play in online retail shopping this holiday season, such as shoppers' increased use of search engines and comparison shopping services to make better informed buying decisions. Not all trends are encouraging, however, such as a disconcertingly high percentage of shoppers willing to buy from spammers.
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Online merchants are poised to record a much bigger rise in holiday sales than their offline counterparts. Broadband expansion, more luxury gift sales and a rise in late shoppers help the bottom line. By Joanna Glasner.
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Sales in the US by online retailers rise 19% between 1 November and 27 December, comScore says.
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My friend Brian Smith of Comparison Engines and SingleFeed is currently running a promotion for Search Engine Journal readers to help them submit nd optimize their shopping cart feed for free to Froogle / Google Base. Cyber Monday is only 10 days away.  If you&#8217;re not up on the shopping comparison engines, you&#8217;re potentionally [...]
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Consumers in the United States are already spending record amounts of money online. One e-commerce company has a novel way to help Net shoppers hunt for bargains this holiday season.
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Online auction king eBay (Quote, Chart) reported a better than 50 percent rise in quarterly revenue from last year and profits that jumped by about 77 percent compared to last year, thanks in part to its PayPal unit and growth overseas.
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Spending by Americans shopping online during this year's holiday season rose 24 percent to $8.8 billion, with sharp gains in purchases of clothing and entertainment, Web company VeriSign Inc. said on Thursday.
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Positive stock action has been seen throughout the Net sector this week, as eBay struck all-time highs and Google recovered 11 percent of its value.
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Online holiday spending, excluding travel and auctions, was &#36;8.41 billion between Nov. 1 through Dec. 5, up 23 percent from the year-ago period and on track to meet estimates, comScore Networks said Friday.
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The sharemarket will move into record territory this week despite an expected mixed opening tomorrow. Market watchers say shares will hit new highs because they remain cheap following the recent bumper profit and dividend season.
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It's been a strong week for tech offerings, and the momentum may continue.
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Web holiday sales are up 24 percent over a year ago, says comScore. However it is believed the shopping season may extend longer online this season as consumers appear to be confident that expedient shipping would get their gifts in time.