Enough with the Groupon madness this week.  Let’s talk about things that actually impact our businesses.  Like holidays sales to date, and in particular, a quick post-mortem on Cyber Monday now that the week is over.  Forrester fielded some questions to consumers in conjunction with Bizrate Insights (the findings will be available in full to clients in a few weeks) and here are some quick takeaways as teasers: 

• Most people don’t buy on Cyber Monday (though many would like to), so the Cyberweek deals like Amazon has are always a good idea.  62% of the 3,200 shoppers we surveyed said that they didn’t shop on Cyber Monday.
• Of those who shopped but did not buy (45% of shoppers who were trolling eCommerce sites on Cyber Monday!), 28% wanted to buy but didn’t see any products that they wanted. Product selection is king.
• Social, schmocial.  Not such a big deal yet.  Only 7% of people who found deals on Cyber Monday found them through social networks or Twitter, versus 51% who found them from emails from the retailer.
• Some people live under rocks. Kidding. But one-fifth of the people who didn’t shop on Cyber Monday said “They didn’t know there was anything special about that day.”  How that is possible I have no idea, but I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they don’t have time in their lives to squander away time online like the rest of us.  But for anyone really wondering what this “special day” is about, check out this link (see the full slideshow here) — these are screen shots of the top 50 merchants’ home pages from this past Monday.
• Yes, the Web is taking share from physical stores. Stores need to be afraid, very afraid. 45% percent (yup) of people who shopped during the Thanksgiving weekend agreed with the statement “I shopped online instead of in stores because there were better deals online.” 

Now all this said, the big question is, what did Cyber Monday do for sales?  All third-party figures point to the fact that even in spite of the fact that awareness and participation aren’t even saturated, signs are great which should point to many more years of blockbuster Cyber Mondays. CoreMetrics, reported a 14% year-over-year cumulative sales increase, a 12% average order value increase, and a nearly 15% items per order increase.  Chase Paymentech, which has actual retailer transactions, also reflected strong spikes in YOY sales and average transaction levels.