US shoppers rack up $6.59 bn in online Cyber Monday sales

US shoppers shopped online yesterday, and racked up $6.59 billion in online sales by the end of the day.

Cyber Monday set a new online record, compared with online sales of $5.03 billion on Black Friday, according to Adobe Analytics. This worked out to a 16.8 per cent increase on the previous record for Cyber Monday of $5.65 billion.

The strongest surge in purchases was projected between 8 pm and 11 pm in every time zone, when deliberating shoppers finally committed to what they've been buying all day and over the "Turkey 5" - the five shopping days starting on Thanksgiving and continuing through Cyber Monday.

Shoppers told the media ''know the deals end at midnight so it's the final rush,'' said Tamara Gaffney, Adobe's strategic insights engagement director.

The biggest chunk of those sales are likely to have been bagged by Amazon. According to market research firm, Slice Intelligence, Amazon is estimated to have a 42 per cent share of all online sales.

''The problem for everybody else is that Amazon has basically become a verb. It's the reflex reaction to start on Amazon and then you go other places only if you can't find what you want there,'' said Bob Goodwin, consumer electronics practice lead at InfoScout, a consumer-behaviour research company.

Meanwhile, mobile users accounted for 47.4 per cent of all visits to shopping websites, Adobe found, with 39.9 per cent of those on a smart phone and another 7.6 per cent on tablets.

In the UK a whopping £1.4 billion was spent on online sales on Black Friday, up some 11.7 per cent on last year, according to online retailers trade body IMRG.

But it was a different story on High Streets, shopping centres and retail with footfall figures down 3.6 per cent, according to analysis firm Springboard.

Online shopping growth is an established trend already, but according to IMRG, it works particularly well for sales.

"People shop in a lot more places than they would normally. Because they know everyone is offering massive discounts then they are inclined to shop around more. Online lends itself well to that," says IMRG strategy and insight director Andy Mulcahy, BBC reported.