Stores in the snow-battered East Coast may have been sparsely filled over the weekend, but shoppers kept spending online. Retailers spurred sales with discounts and shipping offers to ensure gifts arrive by Christmas.
The storm that battered the East Coast from the Carolinas to New York may have put at least a $2 billion dent in “Super Saturday,” which usually accounts for $15 billion worth of sales nationwide, weather-research firm Planalytics said Monday.
Mall traffic was down 10 percent Saturday, but it surged 65 percent Friday night as more people went out in anticipation of the storm.
Retailers with have must-have items such as Toys R Us and Best Buy and one-stop shops such as Wal-Mart are poised to recover the lost sales better than the rest of industry, Planalytics said.
Many shoppers turned on their computers to work on their Christmas lists. Online retail sales rose 22.4 percent for the weekend compared with last year, Web-research company Coremetrics said. On Saturday, sales were up 24.8 percent.
Retailers were ready to prod those sales along. extended the cutoff for standard shipping by one day — until Monday — and offered free two-day shipping for select electronics products. It would not release figures for weekend traffic.
Macy’s website offered free shipping until Monday, and J.C. Penney through today.
Shoppers are busy hunting for last-minute deals. Retail Web traffic peaked at 2.9 million visitors a minute Saturday night, according to the Akamai Retail Net Usage Index. That was up from 1.9 million on the Saturday before Christmas in 2008, though that day — Dec. 20 — was closer to Christmas than this year.
The Sunday peak was 3.5 million visitors a minute, compared with 2.2 million on the Sunday before Christmas last year.
