Online Retail Sales Rise With Holiday Shopping SeasonOnline Retail Sales Rise With Holiday Shopping Season

Online retail sales were up 13 percent in the first week of the busiest time in the holiday shopping season, as sales of entertainment and photo printing and sharing showed the biggest increases over last year, an online payment services company said Wednesday.

For the week of Dec. 6, holiday sales reached $2.2 billion, while the total volume of transactions reached 28.9 million, a 21 percent jump over the comparable period last year, VeriSign Inc. said. The first full week preceding Christmas and New Years are typically the top shopping days of the season.

VeriSign, based in Mountain View, Calif., based its findings on an analysis of sales processed through its payment service, which, according to the company, accounts for more than 35 percent of all North American online sales representing 120,000 retailers.

Photo printing and sharing sales rose 95 percent over the first week of the prime-shopping season last year, the largest jump of any retail category, VeriSign said. The second biggest increase was in music and video downloads, which were up 30 percent, followed by clothing sales, 22 percent. Electronic sales increased only 4 percent, but carried the highest average ticket price of $294.

"We're seeing an increase in consumer confidence in the online medium," Trevor Healy, vice president of payment services for VeriSign, said. "Consumers are heading online more and are increasingly confident in buying content, in addition to traditional hard products."

The jump in music and video downloads over the web may reflect an increasing number of young adult shoppers who grew up on the Internet as teenager, Healy said.

"This new generation is the always on generation," Healy said. "They have access to the online medium from cellular phones, handheld devices and computers at home. There's constant interaction with broadband networks."

The average sales amount was $140 during the period between Thanksgiving and Sunday, Dec. 12, a $10 increase from the same period last year.

During the same period, online shoppers spent $4.6 billion, a 15 percent increase over a year ago, VeriSign said. Dec. 6 was the peak day of the period, accounting for 5.4 million transactions. The total number of purchases was 43.7 million.