Black Friday marks the first official Christmas shopping day after Thanksgiving with brick and mortar stores offering discounts, deals and good bargins on gifts, Cyber Monday is the Monday after Thanksgiving and is the biggest online shopping day in the workd of e-commerce. Below is a list of some of the most important news and facts about Cyber Monday and Black Friday. Comparison Shopping Engines, eBay, Amazon and free shipping are a driving factor in new sales this year and years past history.

Comparison Shopping Soars; Amazon, Wal-Mart Still Dominate E-Tail
November 9, 2007

About 56 percent more comparison shopping inquiries were the made the first week of November this year compared with the same week last year, according to new figures released this week from Web traffic tracker Hitwise.

Hitwise reports that the top price-comparison sites were

• Yahoo Shopping 20 %
• Smarter.com 15 %
• Bizrate 14 %

The top retailers who enjoyed the traffic from those sites were Amazon, eBay, Target, Overstock.com, Wal-Mart and JCPenney.

Shopzilla experienced the biggest increase in traffic among visitors aged 45-plus, with a 58 percent gain for the week ending Nov. 3, 2007, compared to the same week last year. NexTag saw a 48 percent increase in traffic while YahooShopping received a 46 percent increase for the same week.

Historic Cyber Monday and Black Friday Facts & News

Cyber Monday Breaks Records
November 29, 2006

In the world of e-commerce, the Monday after Thanksgiving is referred to as Cyber Monday. As the first workday after the long weekend, it’s expected to be big for online retail, with Internet-connected employees get to their holiday shopping.

In 2006, Cyber Monday once again saw the highest unique audience of any day so far last holiday season with 29.5 million unique visits to Nielsen//NetRatings Holiday eShopping Index.
Sixteen million of those visits came from the workplace, Neilsen//NetRatings said. That’s up 7 percent over last year. Of that, eBay, Amazon and Wal-Mart again took the top three spots, drawing 5.6 million, 4.2 million and 2.5 million unique visitors, respectively.

The top shopping search engine was Shopzilla.com with 959,000 unique visitors.

Customer spending on Cyber Monday totaled $608 million, up 26 percent versus the same day last year, according to comScore.

E-Commerce Makes Hay on Black Friday
November 27, 2006

eBay led the top online shopping destinations on Black Friday with 7.5 million unique visitors.
Amazon and Wal-Mart Stores followed with 3.4 million and 3.2 million unique visitors, respectively.
That Black Friday bump was evident across e-commerce, but week-over-week growth was particularly strong for consumer electronics, Nielsen//NetRatings said.
According to Web research firm CoreMetrics, Cyber Monday,” will see the highest traffic this season
and next Monday, Dec. 4, will yield the most sales for Internet commerce.

Study: One in Three to Brave Black Friday

• 34% Plan to shop in stores on Black Friday day after Thanksgiving
  
• 61% Plan to avoid stores
  
• Of those planning to stay away from the malls, 10 percent used words like “crazy,” “madhouse,” “hectic,” and “insane” to describe the experience.
  
• 77% cite shopping for good deals on gifts, low prices and bargins as the reason they shop in stores that day.
  
• 9% shopped that day because of tradition (this was the second most popular reason for Black Friday shopping).

The Top stores people plan to shop