On the heels of the biggest Black Friday online sales in history ($1.042 Billion in sales), Cyber Monday reclaimed it’s title of the highest online spending day of the holiday season (so far).

comScore reports Cyber Monday 2012 sales hit $1.465 billion dollars compared with $1.25 billion a year ago, making it the highest spending day in ecommerce history.

Cyber Monday sales were  up  17% over 2011.

On the heels of this announcement, comScore also announced that Thanksgiving Day sales were up 32% to $633 million. (Thanksgiving Day sales reflect a  trend I’ve been speaking about for the past two holiday seasons  – shoppers who don’t watch football on Thanksgiving (or Christmas) and instead turn their attention to online shopping.)

With these massive increases, we’re now on track for a $79 Billion dollar holiday selling season!

• Amazon remained the top visited retailer on both Black Friday and Cyber Monday (no data was available for Thanksgiving Day visits, but it’s safe to say that Amazon likely topped that day too).

Amazon warehouse workers load outbound packages onto a truck for delivery. Photo Credit: Associated Press

• eBay put in a very strong showing as well this week, with  mobile transacted volume in the U.S. 2.5 times greater on Black Friday — a 153% increase — compared to 2011.

• PayPal saw an almost three-fold increase — 193% — in global mobile payment volume, compared to 2011.

• Buy.com saw sales surge 28 percent over 2011

All this traffic means great news for many of the millions of 3rd party sellers who sell in these marketplaces.

Several members of our Increase Holiday Sales program reported there sales were double or triple over last year on Amazon.

Others reported this to be the strongest holiday selling season they’ve seen in the past 5 years of selling online.

Top Sellers

• Adobe said that toys and sporting goods led the way, followed by health and beauty.

• Home and auto was the third most selling category.

• Apparel and accessories were also reported to be a hot selling category.

You can track online holiday shopping courtesy of Adobe’s Digital Index tool.  The ADO keeps track of current sales and estimates how the rest of the holiday shopping days will fare.

Will the Pace Continue?

While some industry analysts predicted a Cyber Monday slowdown after a fast start to online sales on Black Friday, analysts are now projecting continued strong sales right up through Christmas.

On the heels of December 25th, we’ll head right-into the post-season holiday sales, when shoppers spend gift cards and cash they received as gifts, buy the things they really wanted (but didn’t get) during the holidays, along with exchanging the “oh… this is…. nice” 🙂 gifts that they’ll never use.

Game On! Not Over!

We’re still in the early stages of holiday primetime! Online merchants wanting to maximize their sales, will need to keep pushing straight through until January 15th, when things settle down for a couple weeks until Valentine’s Day shopping kicks in.

There’s still time to implement many of the 7 SUREFIRE Strategies to Increase YOUR Holiday Sales offered in this FREE video webinar that I hosted back in September. Grab your copy today!

How were your holiday sales?

Tell me below!

-Lisa