E-Commerce Picking Up In December After Terrible November

Are things looking up a little bit for online retailers? Black Friday e-commerce sales were essentially flat from last year -- up only 1%, in an industry to accustomed to double-digit annual growth. But online sales have stayed up since Cyber Monday (Dec. 1), with e-commerce up 9% y/y since then.

Of course, the somewhat better sales aren't being spread around evenly. ComScore's winners:

• Amazon (AMZN), visitors up 10%
• Wal-Mart (WMT), visitors up 7%
• Apple (AAPL), visitors up 29%
• Consumer electronics, sales up 24%
• Video games, sales up 9%

And losers:

• eBay (EBAY), visitors down 9%
• Dell (DELL), visitors down 17%
• Jewelry, sales down 22%
• Music, movies, and videos, sales down 24%

But the experts don't always agree -- while comScore's figures are generally well-regarded, the New York Times is reporting figures from Chase Paymentech suggesting Cyber Monday's sales were only up less than 1%.

See Also:
Black Friday E-Commerce Sales Up 1%: ComScore
Black Friday Traffic Surge Overloads Amazon's Surge-Proof Servers