Some early Christmas Holiday season sales numbers are in and they are, if not quite in keeping with most rosy of projections, were still very encouraging to online retailers ands wholesale suppliers. Internet market research firm ComScore Networks has released a study of the online sales for the period of November 1st through December 12th and excludes all travel related spending. The grand total, during this period online spending reached $17.6 billion.
The December 12th cut off date is presumably select both because it is the end of the week and a good guess for the date at which it will start becoming extremely unlikely that retailers will be able to guarantee delivery in time for Christmas. However, according to the online arm of the National Retail Federation, the number of retailers who guarantee that standard shipping orders placed by Dec. 18 or 19 will be delivered by Christmas Day to be 39 %, almost twice last year’s 19 percent.

During the first 27 days of November, total online retail spending reached $9.48 billion, or a 24 % increase versus the same period last year, the report said. In keeping with nearly all online retail sales trends over the last several years there is no immediately apparent ceiling to the growth.

The first week of December according to ComScore, saw the number of online buyers increase by 17% over a year ago, and the average amount spent per order increased 7%. Kurt Peters, editor in chief of Internet Retailer, says the growth is likely coming from more people shopping online as well as from experienced online shoppers increasing how much they spend. Peters says new buyers spend less than experienced buyers.

The single biggest sales day of the season last year was December 11th when shoppers spent $556 million dollars online. This was a significant increase from the year before. For the entire period, November 1 through December 12, online retail sales from were up 25% over 2005. Lat year total sales for the period were $12.47 billion, this year $15.58 billion.

ComScore’s report says Wednesday December 13th was likely the biggest online shopping day of the year with nearly $670 million in sales. This figure tops 2005′s No. 1 day by over $100 million. There have been 12 days this year were sales have surpassed $600 million.

“We keep seeing strong growth,” Scott Silverman, executive director of the National Retail Federation online division, shop.org was quoted in a Yahoo News story as saying. “It’s newsworthy when it continues, because each year you’re growing off a bigger base.”

Other studies performed during the run up towards the shopping season had predicted almost 40% of shoppers polled were planning to do more of their holiday purchasing online. It is clear that consumers are growing increasing confident in and dependant on Internet retail to meet their buying needs.

Among individual retailers the biggest winners were little changed from last year. Leading the pack of online retailers was Amazon.com with the largest sales during the studied period. Crossing the economic tape in second place was Dell.com. In descending order the remaining top ten holiday retailers were Yahoo.com, Wal-mart.com, JCPenny.com, Ticketmaster.com, Apple.com, Victoriassecret.com, Bestbuy.com, and Circuitcity.com.

While that list of names, all industry giants, might not be particularly thrilling to the small online retailer it is important to remember that old economic cliché, a rising tide lifts all boats. Smaller retail web sites have benefited as well. Consumer expectations of reliability and delivery times are rising along with their expenditures but retailers that meet these expectations will find their stockings stuffed with profits and can look forward to an even better year in 2007.
Art Micklewraith is a freelance writer and regular contributor to Top Ten Wholesale. He can be reached at Content and Solutions or by email at artmicklewraith@gmail.com