Online retail sales during this holiday season have recorded a remarkable growth as compared to overall sales in the retail market. A steadily improving market condition, better supply-chain management and additional benefits on online shopping have together played a major role in swinging shoppers' preferences towards online stores. According to a recent report published by National Retail Foundation (NRF) - sales recorded during November and December 2009 is up by 1.1% over the same period in 2008. This came as a surprise as most of the experts including NRF predicted that shoppers would be reluctant to spend on online retail considering the bottleneck situation due to the economic recession.

However, online retail sales have proved everyone wrong and as ComScore Inc.'s report reveals, holiday season sales grew by 4% over the last year. NRF also reported that overall sales from the retail market were at $446.1 billion during the holiday season. Interestingly, this figure does not include sales of automobiles, gas or restaurants. Online retail sales were up from $28 billion in holiday season in 2008 to $29.1 billion in 2009. This means in the overall retail sales, online retail contributed 6.5% as compared to 6.3% previous year. Most importantly, these figures are excluding the sales on eBay, one of the three global market leaders in online shopping. Naturally, if the sales from eBay and those seasonal web stores are included, the contribution of online retail sales will be even more significant.

As analysts pointed out - the retailers succeeded in managing their inventories and responded well for the demands posed by online shoppers. Thanks to those freebies and various discounts offered during the holiday season - many shoppers opt to purchase online. A number of online retailers have implemented enhanced online shopping platforms, upgraded online shopping cart with new technologies (details can be found here ), and offered customers a better experience for shopping online; this wise planning returned as multiplied profits for all the retailers. Incidentally, ComScore's report also reveals that the highest spending in a day in the history of online retailing was on 15 December 2009 - a whooping $913 million!

These stats and reports from top analysts in the world suggest only one fact - online retail is back with a BANG! So, if your customer-base is constrained into your local market only and at the same time, you dream of a business that would keep on growing year after year, NOW is the time that you take yourself online! Otherwise - you may end up missing the bus to success!