Online sales account for a rapidly growing share of retail business between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

01:00 AM EST on Tuesday, November 29, 2005

BY PAUL GRIMALDI
Journal Staff Writer

Americans are continuing to move their gift shopping from physical stores to online ones this year in a shift that will gain momentum in the week after Thanksgiving, according to retail industry analysts.

Online sales for U.S. retailers rose 24 percent to $6.96 billion this month as shoppers revved up spending before the Thanksgiving holiday.

Consumers spent $441 million online last Tuesday, when revenue jumped 55 percent, according to ComScore Networks, of Reston, Va.

But the Monday after Thanksgiving has become the key day for online shopping. Last year, shoppers spent about $386 million online, most of it while sitting in front of computers at work that day.

A recent survey by Shop.org and BizRate Research showed that 77 percent of retailers reported their sales increased substantially on the Monday after Thanksgiving.

Despite the substantial increase in high-speed Internet connections in homes, consumers have not reduced their habit of buying online from work. According to ComScore, 38 percent of online buying on that day last year came between 8 a.m. and noon and 47 percent came between 1 and 5 p.m.

ComScore will release its analysis of yesterday's online spending later today.

Changing consumer habits are not necessarily a bad thing for retailers, many of whom have followed their customers online.

"A lot of this is intentional," said Kenny Thomas, a spokesman for Visa USA. "If you look at the major retailers, they have a very strong online presence and they're very aggressive with pushing the online channel."

Visa saw credit-card purchases made online rise 32.1 percent on Friday and Saturday when compared with the same period last year, while overall credit purchases rose 11.4 percent during the period.

After holding back for most of the month, shoppers went after electronics in a big way over the weekend, Thomas said.

"That category was pretty flat the first couple of weeks of November," Thomas said. "In this very last weekend it's up 20.6 percent last year.

"That's the first major spike we've seen."

At online shopping service PersonalShopper.com electronics pulled the average order to $96, said Laura Silsby, who founded the Boise, Idaho, company last year.

Given the high-priced items purchased in the last few days, Silsby said, she's unsure whether the average will stay that high.

"It's a little early in the season," she explained.

ComScore estimates that overall online spending this year will climb 24 percent to $19.6 billion. The firm monitors the Internet usage of 2 million consumers to gauge revenue.

The number of consumers visiting online stores jumped 29 percent on "Black Friday" -- the day retailers are likely go from red to black ink in their ledgers, indicating profit -- from a year earlier, according to New York-based Nielsen.

Paul Grimaldi covers retailing and consumer behavior. E-mail him at pgrimald@projo.com