Monday After Thanksgiving Key for E-Commerce

The Friday after Thanksgiving may be the day people head to the malls, but thanks to broadband Internet connections at work, it’s the Monday after Thanksgiving that crowds the online stores.

According to data from comScore Networks, Monday, Nov. 26, was the highest day recorded in 2001 to date for total e-commerce, logging $220 million in total sales for the day.

comScore’s estimates are based on the passively captured purchase activity of a representative cross section of more than 1.5 million Internet users, who have given comScore permission to confidentially monitor their browsing and buying behavior.

“While the Friday following Thanksgiving is traditionally the day to watch in the offline world, it’s the following Monday — when people return to work and are able to use their company’s high-speed Internet connection — that really waves the starting flag for holiday e-commerce,” said Dan Hess, comScore vice president. “As we expected, Monday’s online sales actually exceeded those of the entire weekend, and were dramatically higher than the post-Thanksgiving Friday.”

The Computer Hardware and Consumer Electronics categories rose dramatically post-Thanksgiving; these categories’ combined share of total sales usually about 20 percent, leapt to 33 percent of total sales, 46 percent of non-travel sales.