Black Friday Web activity offers some bright spots

Today is so-called Cyber Monday, usually one of the biggest days of the year for online shopping, but a snapshot of online sales activity from last Friday - a.k.a. Black Friday - yielded only "scattered bright spots," according to a report from Coremetrics.

"The online retail sector in general registered drops in e-commerce activities on Black Friday 2008 compared to the same period last year," said Coremetrics, a California-based provider of digital marketing optimization solutions. "The number of page and product views across the online retail sector in general was down 8.55 and 8.29 percent respectively compared to Black Friday 2007, suggesting that online retailers are doing a poor job of directing people to browse through their selection of products."

One bright spot was the retail websites of department stores.

"Department Stores were big winners on Black Friday, with a 12 percent increase in order sessions," Coremetrics said in a press release.

To read the Coremetrics press release, please click here.

Later in the morning, another company issued a snapshot of online activity during Black Friday.

The Nielsen Co. said in a press release that its service Nielsen Online reported that "Web traffic from home and work to the Holiday eShopping Index increased 10 percent year-over-year on Black Friday, growing from 28.8 million unique visitors in 2007 to 31.7 million unique visitors in 2008 across more than 120 representative online retailers."

Meanwhile, preliminary results for Black Friday sales at brick-and-mortar stores were generally positive. Once upon a time, Black Friday sales were a good bellwether for the holiday shopping season as a whole. But in recent years, Black Friday activity has been a less reliable barometer, and doubts remain this year about whether consumers made anxious by the slumping economy will loosen their purse strings and buy enough gifts to make the season a success for merchants.

To read a Bloomberg News story about Black Friday sales that ran in today's Globe, please click here.
(By Chris Reidy, Globe staff)