Ecommerce Hits $17.5 Billion Mark

Looks like Christmas came early this year for e-Commerce merchants.

Research from ComScore shows that consumers spent $17.5 billion through e-Commerce channels during the first 23 days of November, which is an 11 percent increase over the same time period last year. ComScore’s numbers relate to purchases made on desktop computers; mobile and tablet activity push that figure higher.

Figures show that spending was concentrated on specific dates: “Friday, November 21 has been the heaviest online spending day of the season to date at $914 million in desktop spending. Two other individual shopping days (Wednesday, Nov. 12 and Wednesday, Nov. 19) have also surpassed the $900 million threshold.”

But the forecast for retail in general doesn’t look like there will be many shockingly high figures this year following the holiday rush. The National Retail Federation also announced today that it anticipated November and December e-Commerce sales to increase 4.1 percent to $616.9 billion. That’s a slight jump from last year’s 3.1 percent increase during the same period last year.

Still, even for the largest of e-Commerce retailers, the results aren’t particularly strong.

“If Amazon reaches its forecast for the final quarter of the year, its revenue will be well over $20 billion. Although this is for three months, and the comScore and NRF numbers are for shorter periods, the prediction by the huge e-commerce company indicates that there will not be much more money to go around the hundreds and hundreds of online retail sites,” 24/7 Wall Street reported.