This won’t come as a great surprise, but according to Comscore, online holiday spending continues to increase. Through the first seven weeks of the holiday season; beginning November first, US consumers spent $21.7 billion online. What I find of interest is where this increased traffic and sales is coming from.

Luxury items were more popular this year, there was a longer period of shopping and there was an increased amount of niche sites. There was also a large increase in shoppers coming into retail sites from blogs and social networks. So the early lessons learned from this year would be; develop your brand in the blogosphere, and make sure that you are ranked on search engines for niche products.