Amazon Leads in Record Online Black Friday Sales

November 26, 2012 by Trey Thoelcke

Research firm Comscore announced two pieces of data. The first is that Black Friday e-commerce sales rose about $1 billion for the first time ever — to $1.042 billion. The other was that Cyber Monday sales could be as high as $1.5 billion.

Lost in the flurry of press releases was information about the most visited sites, particularly changes from the same period last year. Comscore announced:

Amazon ranked as the most visited online retail site on Black Friday while also posting the highest year-over-year visitor growth rate among the top five retailers.

Most analysts would have expected that, given Amazon.com Inc.’s (NASDAQ: AMZN) overall dominance of the market. In terms of growth, the other sites on the Comscore list are traditionally among the most visited all year long — Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT), Target Corp. (NYSE: TGT) and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL). The one pleasant surprise on the list, at least for its investors, was Best Buy Co. Inc. (NYSE: BBY). The nation’s largest consumer electronics firm has been trying to show its e-commerce model can work and that the company will not be trampled by Amazon.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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