About Chris Williams
Location: Dallas, Texas
Occupation: Web Designer
Bio: Webmaster for PopSyndicate.com and other sites. You can see more of his work at his web design site, Martini Lab, and his blog as well.
Posts: 163
More from this author
Maybe it’s the tryptophan talking, but Cyber Monday is a total myth. It’s like Black Friday but you don’t have to camp out in front of Best Buy to get a PS3. The Monday after Thanksgiving is purported to be the busiest shopping day online. The idea being that consumers will do most of their shopping on Black Friday and finish the rest of their purchases the following Monday while at work. It stands to reason that consumers will want to make their online purchasing decisions early enough to give time for shipping.
However, Black Friday isn’t the busiest shopping day of the year, its just the most annoying. The days leading up to Christmas, and to some extent, Boxing Day are by far the peak of retail sales for the holiday season. True, retail sales have increased every year and Black Friday is a busy day, but that’s largely due to retailers announcing their “one day only” sales.
As it turns out, Cyber Monday is a marketing gimmick. Shop.org, an online retail organization, coined the term to create more consumer excitement. It’s not an actual consumer trend. Cyber Monday has only been around a couple of years and shop.org is doing everything it can to encourage the trend including its new website cybermonday.com. The media is already reporting Cyber Monday as a real event. If Fox News reports it, it must be real.
It’s quite possible that this Cyber Monday thing will take off. Skipping real world shopping is appealing when you consider all the crowded malls filled with shopping zombies. No website will attack you with perfume samples. Not yet anyway.
Online sales were up 24% last year and are expected to have the same growth this year.
Right now the busiest online shopping day occurs the second week of December which is about the same time holiday shopping kicks into full gear. So if you haven’t made your Amazon wishlist yet, don’t worry, you still have time.
Chris Williams wants a pony.
