Consumers of America, start your search engines.
Today’s “Cyber Monday” online shopping blitz is expected to be the Internet’s biggest sales day of the year, with retail websites hawking doorbuster deals as they scramble to rev up holiday momentum.
Online retailers are expected to rack up $1.5 billion in sales today as shoppers pounce on web deals from their work cubicles, couches at home and mobile phones, according to comScore, an e-commerce research firm.
The frenzy will mark a sales increase of 20 percent from a year earlier, making Cyber Monday the highest-volume online shopping day for the third straight year, the firm said.
Advertised discounts include 60 percent off a 55-inch Panasonic TV at Amazon, normally priced at more than $1,000. Sears is offering a Maytag washer and dryer for $399, claiming a savings of $430.
But shopping sites increasingly are looking to drive sales with Internet savvy rather than margin-killing markdowns, according to Vicki Cantrell, executive director at Shop.org, an online retail trade group.
“Retailers have honed and improved their websites, mobile sites and social media outreach to be better than ever,” Cantrell said.
Chains such as Walmart, Macy’s and Best Buy staged aggressive online promotions during Thanksgiving weekend, raking in $59.1 billion in sales, according to the National Retail Federation. Growth on Thanksgiving Day was particularly strong.
A record 247 million shoppers visited stores and websites, the group said, up from 226 million last year. The average holiday shopper spent $423 this weekend, up from $398 last year.
Shoppers spent more than 40.7 percent of their budgets online, up from 37.8 percent last year.
That, however, could steal some thunder from Cyber Monday, just as a rash of early openings on Thanksgiving last week siphoned away sales from Black Friday, according to ShopperTrak, a Chicago-based research firm.