Black Friday e-commerce spending rose 11 percent, comScore says

Black Friday online spending rose 11 percent in the U.S. to $595 million, according to market research firm comScore.

This e-commerce spending figure trumps the $534 million spent on Black Friday a year ago. On Thanksgiving day, online spending was $310 million, up 10 percent from $288 million a year ago. And in the first 27 shopping days of November, online sales were $10.57 billion, up 3 percent from $10.25 billion a year ago.

Black Friday was the second-heaviest online spending day to date in 2009.

“Black Friday, better known as a shopping bonanza in brick-and-mortar retail stores, is increasingly becoming one of the landmark days in the online holiday shopping world,” said comScore chairman, Gian Fulgoni. “While this acceleration in spending suggests the online holiday season may be shaping up slightly more optimistically than anticipated, it may also reflect the heavy discounting and creative promotions being put forth by retailers that now encompass the use of social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.”

Fulgoni said that Cyber Monday — the traditional kick-off of the online holiday shopping season — and the subsequent weeks will be the real test for how online retailers fare this season.

One of the new ‘influencers’ are shopping sites known as Black Friday deal sites, which aggregate deals for shoppers. ComScore studied eight Black Friday deal sites for the five days ending Black Friday (Nov. 23-27) compared to the same days last year. Of those, BFads.net led the pack with 3.9 million unique visitors, up 4 percent versus last year. BlackFriday.info followed with 3.5 million visitors, while Black-Friday.net (up 136 percent to 2.3 million visitors) showed the fastest growth.

Meanwhile, comScore said the number of visitors to coupon sites on Black Friday grew to 3.3 million visitors, up 17 percent versus a year ago. Like Experian Hitwise, comScore reported that Amazon.com was the most visited online retail site on Black Friday, with traffic up 28 percent from the same day a year ago.

[Photo credit: New York Daily News]