It's being reported by Coremetrics that Cyber Monday generated 14% more sales than a year ago. Furthermore, consumers bought nearly 30% more items per order versus 2008. Coremetrics is also reporting that shoppers bought 10% more items per order online than they did in stores on Black Friday.

Considering the online environment's propensity to offer deals or promotions, the ease of the shopping experience (if executed well) and customer loyalty to their online shopping places of choice, I'm really not that surprised.

The next statistic, however, is one that gets me excited about the possibilities of where we are headed as an economy of web-savvy consumers. Akamai, an internet monitoring firm, is reporting that an average of 4.3 million consumers per minute visited shopping websites throughout the day Monday in North America. That number peaked to 5.1 million visitors per minute on Monday night.

What does this mean other than a tremendous amount of people are shopping online?

Initially, there are a few things that come to mind.

First, you better either be playing in this space already or be prepared to get there soon. This trend isn't just by luck or some miracle. Consumers communicate online, pay bills online, get information online, order food online, get entertainment online and find significant others online. So, it's only a matter of time until they are focusing all of their attention on buying online vs. in-store.

Think of it this way, if I go to the physical store down the street, will the store automatically ship my purchases to whatever address I request? No. It's as simple as filling out a shipping address form online and just like that, packages, presents or other purchases are being delivered exactly where consumers want them. No stress, no trips out of their home. They've just eliminated a trip to the store (and all of our favorites things that come with that: full parking lots, long lines, crying babies and those weird smells) and a second trip to the post office to mail their purchases. Not only that, they're probably getting a better deal online.

Second, once you're in the space you would be crazy to not ensure your shopping experience is the best it possibly can be. Consumers quickly gravitate to those retailers and companies that offer easy to understand shopping experiences. Overdo how easy it is. A good information architecture and wireframe planning strategy, paired with usability testing will do wonders for the final product.

Third, one of the statistics above has to be elaborated on - Coremetrics is also reporting that shoppers bought 10% more items per order online than they did in stores on Black Friday. Read that again and then really think about what that means. Shopping online is easier, less stressful and overall a more enjoyable experience for consumers. This means your happy consumers love the ease of shopping online so much that during the process quickly realize buying more product online doesn't mean walking to a different section of the store and spending another hour or more finding additional products. They may not even realize they "needed" anything else, but boy, spending an additional 5 minutes to find that additional buy was a lot more enjoyable than spending an hour never finding what you're looking for in the store. More importantly, this means they're paying closer attention to special deals. Companies can push better promotions at a much higher rate of speed to market (i.e. instantly). Lastly, stores have to keep inventory. Try to convince me that one of the most irritating things isn't when you drive all the way to a store to find out they're out of the product you needed. Shopping online means as a consumer I get to order my products all in one shopping experience and rest easy knowing that my purchase order will be filled and shipped, without stepping a foot outside of my house.

If I can't buy your products online, you're missing a great opportunity.