November turned out to be a pretty good start to the online holiday sales season for numerous online retailers.  Per the Shop.org – Forrester Holiday Online Sales Flash Survey conducted last week (Dec. 2 to 4, 2009), almost three-quarters of retailers surveyed reported top line sales growth for November (including Cyber Monday), compared with the same period last year.

Many of you are familiar with our quarterly online sales flash survey, which asks simply how gross online sales have grown year over year.  As I mentioned last week, during the holidays we poll retailers twice on this subject, once for November (including Cyber Monday), and second measuring November 1 through December 21.  

What else did we learn in this round? Almost three-quarters of multichannel retailers and branded manufacturers surveyed saw growth for the period, as did almost four out of five online-only (“pure-play”) retailers who participated. While over four out of five large retailers surveyed experienced growth, so did over three-quarters of medium-sized and over half of small retailers. 

Shop.org Members can now download the data summary as well as the full results summary. Later this month, be on the lookout for your invitation to participate in our second holiday sales flash survey – if you didn’t get an invitation last week, please drop me a line and I’ll be sure to include your company in the next round. And my thanks to all of you who did participate in the survey last week!