Nielsen Online reported that as people headed back to work after the holiday weekend, Web traffic from home and work to the Holiday eShopping Index increased 10 percent year over year on Cyber Monday. Unique visitors to the sites included in the Index reached 35.9 million, a 13 percent increase over this year's Black Friday Web traffic.

"The growth in traffic to online retail sites on Cyber Monday was better than many people expected, making retailers hopeful that this growth will carry through the holiday shopping season and drive sales," said Ken Cassar, vice president, industry insights, Nielsen Online. "The combination of aggressive holiday sales and incentives, such as free shipping, across many of the major retailers is helping drive a large number of consumers online this year." Cassar added, "It remains to be seen if people have done the majority of their shopping on these two big shopping days to save time, or if they are holding out for additional sales and promotions. If history is any indication, we expect that Monday, Dec. 15th will be the peak day for online shopping traffic."

Holiday eShopping Index Category Growth

Beauty was the fastest growing product category on Monday, increasing 151 percent over the previous Monday, November 24th. Toys/Videogames took the No. 2 spot growing 112 percent Monday over Monday; while Apparel rounded out the top 3 with an increase of 58 percent.

Cyber Monday Top 10 Online Retail Destinations

Many of the top online retail destinations on Cyber Monday were the same as those on Black Friday. eBay took the No. 1 spot, with 10.6 million unique visitors, while Amazon and Wal-Mart were No. 2 and No. 3, with 9.0 million and 5.2 million unique visitors, respectively. Among the top 10 online retailers, Sears was the fastest growing online retail destination, increasing 58 percent over last year.