Despite the economic crisis the Cyber Monday online sales bonanza drew more traffic than compared to Cyber Monday 2007.
Nielsen Online reports that Web traffic from home and work to the Holiday eShopping Index increased 10% year over year on Cyber Monday.
Unique visitors to the sites included in the Index reached 35.9 million, a 13% increase over this year’s Black Friday Web traffic.
“The growth in traffic to online retail sites on Cyber Monday was better than many people expected, making retailers hopeful that this growth will carry through the holiday shopping season and drive sales,” said Ken Cassar, vice president, industry insights, Nielsen Online.
“The combination of aggressive holiday sales and incentives, such as free shipping, across many of the major retailers is helping drive a large number of consumers online this year.”
Cassar added, “It remains to be seen if people have done the majority of their shopping on these two big shopping days to save time, or if they are holding out for additional sales and promotions. If history is any indication, we expect that Monday, Dec. 15th will be the peak day for online shopping traffic.”

Beauty and Toys/Video games categories grew the most compared to last year.
More details on Nielsen Online (pdf).