Claire Cain Miller reports in the New York Times that Cyber Monday, the Monday after Thanksgiving and a barometer of the health of the retail business, was the second-heaviest online spending day on record. It capped a weekend of strong online sales that topped last year’s post-Thanksgiving Day weekend numbers by 13%.

It will come as no surprise that a lot of turnover was in “big-box” items. “Online, the virtual big-box stores, which had some of the steepest discounts, got the most visits. On Monday, eBay, Amazon, Wal-Mart, Target and Best Buy were the top e-commerce sites,” Miller writes, citing Nielsen Online as a source for the info. The hottest seller? Nintendo’s Wii game console. (See our blog about the marketing of the Wii.)

Even though the gross for the three-day period was close to $1 billion, it’s by no means a sign that e-commerce is singlehandedly going to pull the economy out of its current doldrums. The reason why, according to an analyst at ComScore, is very aggressive discounting. What was gained in volume was countered by lower margins, in other words. Overall, for the current season compared to last, online sales are down 2%.

Nevertheless, given the slump in some other sectors of the economy like the auto biz, we take comfort that things could be worse

RC