With deals offered early, Cyber Monday may lose online sales title

Cyber Monday might be in danger of losing its title as busiest online sales day of the year.

The Monday after Thanksgiving is traditionally the busiest online shopping day, but stores are releasing internet deals earlier, stretching them through the week, as well as making them available in stores. Shoppers looking for discounts spurred online sales on Black Friday to a new high.

During the holiday shopping weekend that kicks off on Thanksgiving and the day afterward known as Black Friday, more and more shoppers decide to skip the mayhem in stores and buy online. Consumers spent $3.34 billion shopping online on Friday, a 21.6 percent increase from the same day last year, according to Adobe Digital Insights, which tracks online retail transactions.

Online sales have also been stretching out more and more. Cartwheel, Target's digital app, started offering holiday deals including 50 percent off one toy per day on Nov. 1. Amazon started offering 35 days of Black Friday deals on Nov. 16. And Walmart kicked off its Cyber Monday deals at 12:01 a.m. EST Friday for the first time as it aimed to grab customers ahead of its competitors.

Lea Bishop shops online starting on Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday, but this year found many retailers had extensive pre-Black Friday deals. She found an iPad at Bestbuy.com for $625, at $150 off during the week before Thanksgiving. To Bishop, the convenience of online shopping is worth more than finding the best deal.

"It may not be the exact lowest price but it was a really good deal," she said. "You kind of have to weigh the 'get up early, stand in line and hope to be the first person there' with the 'Oh I can go buy it now,' even though it may be a little bit more expensive," she said.

Cyber Monday, which is the Monday after Thanksgiving, has typically been the busiest day of the year for online shopping. The phrase was coined in 2005 to encourage online buying when people returned to offices where they had high-speed internet connections.

The term is still used to promote heavy discounts online, even though most people now have constant access to the web via their phones and computers. ComScore expects mobile sales to make up 20 percent of online sales for the first time this year, and Adobe said mobile purchases surged 33 percent on Black Friday to $1.2 billion.

"Thanksgiving has become the new Cyber Monday," said Shawn DuBravac, chief economist at the Consumer Technology Association. Out of the estimated 135.9 million U.S. adults who shopped this past week, 35 percent did so by phone and tablet, an increase from a 28 percent share last year, according to the trade group's survey.

Promotions have changed in response to buying patterns. Instead of door-buster markdowns on a select few products, retailers are shifting to a stream of discounts and alerts during the entire week via email and social media.

"It's really this weeklong flow of deals," DuBravac said.

Research firm comScore had predicted online spending on Cyber Monday will jump to $3.5 billion from $3.12 billion last year. The firm's preliminary holiday shopping forecast, which includes November and December, is for online sales to rise as much as 19 percent to $81 billion.

Overall, the National Retail Federation trade group is forecasting holiday sales for the November and December period to rise 3.6 percent to $655.8 billion, better than the 3 percent growth seen in the year-ago period.

"Instead of fighting the lines, there are even better deals online," said Madison Agnello, who plans to do 90 percent of her shopping online. The week before Cyber Monday she bought a 43-inch LG 4K Smart TV at half of its original $600 price tag.

"I'm shopping soon rather than later, to get it over with and not having to worry about things being sold out," Agnello said.