Thanksgiving 2010 becomes the best for online merchants

According to the stats online retailers probably had the best Thanksgiving this weekend because those discounts reserved by Cyber Monday were widely offered through the weekend. Cyber Monday is the day when many people returning to work after Thanksgiving make gift purchases online.

"We've actually never seen a Thanksgiving Day this robust before online," said Fiona Dias, EVP of strategy and marketing for GSI Commerce, which operates more than 100 online stores for retailers including Toys R Us, Aeropostale Inc and Polo Ralph Lauren Corp.

comScore on Sunday reported that on Thanksgiving Day online holiday spending rose 28 percent to $407 million this year.

"This will go down for a lot of Web retailers as the year that Thanksgiving became the true start of the shopping weekend. A lot of people thought of Black Friday as the retail day and Cyber Monday as the Web day, but I think we've proven that Thanksgiving can be a pretty big Web day as well.”

Thus, retail leader Wal-Mart Stores Inc is offering "Cyber Week" specials including a Viore 24" LED high-definition television for $199 and a Hot Wheels Turbo Town Mega Garage playset, made by Mattel Inc, for $29.

GSI's busiest moment last year was late on Cyber Monday, when the company logged 789 orders across all of its sites in a single minute. It already surpassed that this year, at 11:27 p.m. on Thanksgiving, when it logged 797 orders.

"We clearly believe that for us and the hundred sites we have, it'll be the best holiday we've had by far," Dias said.

Online sales on Black Friday rose 9 percent to $648 million from last year, making it the heaviest online spending day to date in 2010, according to comScore.