People avoided the long lines, snatching up deals from the comfort of their own homes on what has been termed Cyber Monday.
While big name retailers like Target and Walmart offered up great online deals, they weren't the only ones. Small, local retailers are trying to lure customers to their Web sites to take advantage of holiday specials too.
One of those businesses is All Things Italian, a Bozeman shop that specializes in Italian foods, including meats, wines, pasta, sauces, dips, pre-made lunches and dinners and, well, basically all things Italian. The store is offering online shoppers 10 percent off everything in the store.
Connie Anderson and her daughter Nichole Joyce, run the business. They have seen steady growth in online business since the store opened three years ago. In addition to its Web site, the store uses Twitter and Facebook to get the word out about on sales and specials.
"The Twitter's been a great, a great activity that we've participated in. It's got a lot of Bozeman folks that had no clue we were here, found out about us, and then people from all over the U.S. as well," Joyce said.
While Anderson focuses her efforts on cooking, Joyce is in charge of posting daily specials and news to social networking sites.
Its online presence has helped the store reach out to customers all across the United States. So far it has shipped products to 30 different states and as far away as Florida and Alaska. A good deal of business comes from shoppers in California, Joyce said.
While Cyber Monday is just one day, retailers are stretching their deals past today. That includes All Things Italian, which will offer its 10 percent off deal until the middle of December.
The Monday after Thanksgiving is usually far from the busiest online shopping day of the year, but it is typically one of the 10 busiest. It was dubbed "Cyber Monday" by the National Retail Federation trade group in 2005 to describe the Monday after the Thanksgiving holiday.
The thinking was that shoppers who lacked broadband Internet access at home would wait until returning to work to look online. Now that most homes have broadband, that rationale has faded.
Analysts expect Dec. 14, the last day consumers can order goods and have them arrive before Christmas, will be the busiest online shopping day.
Though the Web is only about 10 percent of the holiday shopping pie, it's seen most of the growth so far this year - an encouraging sign after last year's first online sales decline.
Coremetrics, a Web analytics company in San Mateo, Calif., said that as of 1 p.m. Monday, sales for the day that the industry still pitches as "Cyber Monday" were up 19.6 percent over a year ago.
The Associated Press contributed to this story
