Retail Web sites have seen large increases in traffic because holiday shoppers stayed home in large areas of the East Coast because of the weather. The weekend before Christmas is one of the busiest of the year, but snow that stretched from the Carolinas to New England closed malls and kept shoppers off treacherous roads. Web retailers saw heavy traffic during the weekend. On Friday and Saturday, online sales rose 24 percent from the same days last year, Web research company Coremetrics said. It also showed the average shopper spending and ordering more on Saturday, when the weather's effects were deepest, than Friday. Retail Web traffic peaked at 2.9 million visitors per minute Saturday night, according to the Akamai Retail Net Usage Index. Online spending grew 14.4 percent after Black Friday through Dec. 12, according to MasterCard Advisors' SpendingPulse.
- Associated Press