(Bitter)sweet November

November has come and gone and we’re in the final stretch of Q4 toward Christmas which historically has seen major increases in sales, both online and offline.

Will the trend continue this year in making it a season to remember, or will the ghosts of Christmas future haunt online retailers?

Well, it depends on who you ask.

Looking at the glass half empty, the first part of November looks quite gloom, per the New York Times :

During the first 23 days of November, according to a report to be released later on Tuesday by the research firm comScore, consumers spent $8.19 billion online, a 4 percent drop from the same period last year. That marks the first annual decline since e-commerce took off.

Post November 23 though, things seem much more auspicious now per USA Today:

…online visits to Web tracker Akamai Technologies’ approximately 280 retail customer sites topped last Cyber Monday’s peak of 4.6 million visitors per minute. By 3 p.m. Akamai’s global retail customers — which include Best Buy and Victoria’s Secret — were experiencing 6.7 million online visitors per minute — the most Akamai has seen since it started collecting the data in 2005.

Whether or not the spike in traffic has resulted in a proportional increase in sales remains to be seen, but certainly it’s a good trend to be a part of.

Further reports show that despite a slow overall November, sales on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday have actually increased year over year:

Internet research firm ComScore said on Sunday that online spending was up only 2 percent on Thanksgiving Day and Friday combined, compared with a year ago.

PayPal, the online payment service owned by San Jose-based eBay Inc. (Nasdaq: EBAY), said Black Friday transactions were up nearly 34 percent compared with 2007.

Another research firm, ShopperTrak RCT tracks total retail sales at more than 50,000 stores, said sales were up 3 percent to $10.6 billion on Black Friday compared to a year ago.

So there may be hope after all as we exit a poor November and enter into the final month of 2008, with the spirit of the season coming around, consumers may just not be able to help themselves from spending money.