Online retailers saw a 35 percent spike in traffic yesterday, according to a survey of Internet sites.
Akamai, Cambridge, MA, said its Akamai Net Usage Index for retail was already tracking upward by midday on the newly nicknamed “Cyber Monday.” Total North American traffic by visitors per minute was up 35 percent. Web sites in the survey were drawing 1.63 million visitors per minute, Akamai said.
The index tracks 100 U.S.-based online retailers like etoys.com, jcpenney.com and circuitcity.com.
Akamai said global audiences visiting leading shopping sites have been rising at an average of 3.6 percent weekly since Oct. 31. Traffic was expected to peak around 4 p.m. yesterday.
The company said it expected to release a desktop Widget today that can be downloaded to a computer. The Widget lets users monitor traffic to e-commerce sites in real time. It is available at http://akamai.com/widgets.
