Cyber Monday and Black Friday have traditionally been huge shopping days for e-tailers and all ecommerce stores. 

In fact, last year those two shopping days were predicted to result in massive sales and profits for online stores.

Unfortunately, it didn’t quite work out that way.

According to ComScore, Black Friday of 2008 was a big letdown for ecommerce merchants of all descriptions. Instead of living up to the predictions, sales fell short of the expected amount and actually only increased 1% over Black Friday of 2007.

Still, considering how many brick and mortar stores fared---online stores at least showed an increase, even if only a tiny one.

The good news is that it appears that many online shoppers used Black Friday for window shopping, then came back online to buy on Cyber Monday.

Online sales for Cyber Monday of 2008 were 15% higher than the year before. ComScore also showed that the average online consumer spent about 5% less, probably due to all of the extremely great discounts ecommerce merchants offered at the time.

Predictions for this holiday season are not all that jolly.

The National Retail Federation recently released a report that predicts holiday sales to fall by approximately 1% this year.

Ouch!

Nevertheless, total retail sales are expected to be in the neighborhood of around $437.6 billion. Nothing to sneeze at, that’s for sure. Especially considering the recession that is still blanketing the country in hard times.

One surprising finding by the National Retail Federation is that although online stores do see definite increases in sales on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, those are not the most lucrative days of the year.

The last Saturday before Christmas is sometimes the busiest shopping day for the holidays, and Thanksgiving Day had higher than average sales last year.

What can we gather from these findings?

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are busy shopping days, but we need to plan sales and marketing campaigns for other days, also.

The last Saturday before Christmas is cutting it pretty close for online orders to be delivered in time for Santa. So, have those electronic gift certificates ready for the last minute shoppers!

Even though sales are predicted to be a little slower this year due to the economy, there will still be a big surge of consumer spending online during the holidays.

So, make sure that your online store is holiday ready!