Tills chime for e-tailers

If there's a spring in Santa's step this year, it's thanks to the internet.

Even as a Commerce Department report put coal in the nation's economic stocking by showing a 3.1 per cent month-over-month decrease in orders for durable goods for the month of November, two market-research firms and e-tailing giant Amazon.com confirmed earlier data suggesting it was a record year for online holiday sales.

Amazon called this its busiest holiday season yet and reported selling 2.1 million items in a single day -- or 24 units per second -- though it declined to say which day. The company considers the holiday season the period between 1 November and 25 December.

Amazon and 10 e-tailers with major brick-and-mortar components were found in earlier studies to have attracted record traffic this season, and to have performed sluggishly as a result.

Other research pointed to 2003 as the busiest holiday yet for online sellers. Excluding travel purchases, shoppers spent $13bn this holiday season, according to an "eSpending" survey by Goldman Sachs, Harris Interactive and Nielsen/NetRatings. That's up 46 per cent over last year's total.

In the second week of December alone, shoppers spent $2.95bn, up 48 per cent from the same week last year, according to that study.

The eSpending report examined the period between 1 November and 12 December. For the months of November and December, ComScore Networks had a somewhat more modest estimate, with online sales minus travel and auctions projected to total between $12.1bn and $12.6bn -- a 25 per cent to 30 per cent jump from last year's $9.7bn total.

Spending for the week ending 21 December, minus travel and auctions, reached $1.65bn, up 31 per cent from the same week a year ago, according to ComScore.

"As the season winds to a close, it's clear that this was a very strong one for online retailers," Dan Hess, senior vice president of ComScore, said in a release. "Consumers continue to recognise and exploit the benefits of using the web in the shopping process."

The eSpending report confirmed ComScore's notion that shoppers were becoming more comfortable spending money online. Fully 62 per cent of those shopping online described themselves as satisfied with the experience, up 4 per cent from last year, while less than 7 per cent were dissatisfied, down 1 per cent from 2002.

Amazon attributed the spike in customers to the breadth of its product offering, but allowed that the general virtues of online shopping had something to do with it.

"We do think it's that people like the convenience of shopping online," said Amazon representative Chris Bruzzo. "They like the idea of one-stop shopping."