The Pulse Index is an annual tracking of online shopping activity during the holiday season. From November through January, Chase Paymentech monitors the daily settlement activity of 50 of the largest 250 Internet retailers, as defined by the Internet Retailer Top 500. The data includes the average ticket, total number of payment transactions and total dollar value processed. The data is taken from transactions crossing Chase Paymentech's processing platforms.

Final Results for Cyber Holiday Pulse Index
The holiday season is behind us, and the Pulse Index results are in. For 2009, online shopping transactions soared 30 percent over 2008, while total sales volume increased 17.3 percent. The difference in these two numbers can be attributed to the decline in average ticket value, which dropped 9.8 percent.

The results represent a significant rebound from 2008, when sales volume for the holiday season was up a modest 4.5 percent versus 2007. And while the return to double-digit growth was a change, 2009 proved to be the second straight year of declining average tickets, following a 10 percent dip in 2008.

Online shopping started out the season strong, and finished even stronger.

Even before Thanksgiving, there were signs of strength in ecommerce. November transactions were up 26.5 percent, and sales were up 11.1 percent. Beginning on Black Friday, those growth rates surged and remained strong through the next weeks. The season was given another push upward in the final days before Christmas, with 2009 having one more shopping day than 2008. Growth rates remained high even after the holidaysrcent.

Cyber Monday, which this year fell on Nov 30, was likely the biggest single day of the year. The strongest week for transactions and sales was the week ending Dec 19th.

Mike Duffy, President of Chase Paymentech, said, "We were very pleased with the performance of the e-commerce sector this year. Online shopping is clearly growing in importance as a retail channel, and this year's Pulse Index was a great way to keep an eye on this expanding piece of the retail landscape."

Comments, questions or suggestions about the Pulse Index can be sent using the feedback form.

RSS Subscription: Right-click, or if you're a Mac user control-click, on the orange button. Select "copy link," "copy shortcut," or "copy target address." You can also click on the button and copy the URL from the address bar of your browser. Launch your RSS reader and input the URL that you just copied into the program.

• Sales
• Transactions
• Avg Ticket