Cyber Monday used to mean 24 hours of frantic shopping for deals, but some sites have extended the deals for two more days. And on Amazon, new deals are added as often as every 10 minutes.
The discounts alone catch your eye, especially ones as high as 50 percent, but the Cyber Monday countdown clock is sure to get your adrenalin pumping as the deals come to an end.
When asked if he was motivated by the 30, 40 percent discounts online, online shopper Quillon Tsang said, "Absolutely. Savings is savings, you know."
However, some online retailers are extending Cyber Monday through Wednesday. And maybe you won't notice the fine print if you're shopping on a smaller screen. There is a big shift since Thanksgiving to mobile devices.
"We saw mobile traffic for online sales hit 40 percent, over 40 percent for the first time, driving 23 percent of online sales. That traffic was representative of how consumers are shopping, and it's just become part of their day to day," said Marc Dietz, an IBM Digital Analytics.
Online sales so far this Cyber Monday are up almost 19 percent, compared to a year ago. And mobile use is up 62 percent versus last year. And online shoppers are discovering they don't have to go the mall to get Black Friday specials; they're also offered online.
Adam Garske just bought his wife a watch this Cyber Monday.
Louie: "What kind of discount did you get?"
Garske: "About 40 percent, so, yeah."
Louie: "So you're happy with that?"
Garske: "Yeah, yeah, it was a good deal."
Louie: "So there are good deals online?"
Garske: "Absolutely."
Once the orders are placed, the race is on to ship those orders. Palo Alto-based Shipwire is a global order fulfillment operation with seven warehouses around the world. Shipwire provided video to us of its Los Angeles facility. More than 1,000 people are handling online sales for eBay, Amazon and other web retailers.
"Our software network delivers the orders logically to the warehouses, and then they're picked, packed and shipped from the warehouse, put onto UPS trucks, FedEx trucks and postal trucks, delivered to the end buyer. So they get it in one to two days," said Nate Gilmore, the shipwire business development vice president.
Over $2 billion in sales are expected to occur on Cyber Monday. And one of the big losers could be the state of California, which estimates it loses about $1 billion in use taxes from online sales. That could pay for 11,000 teachers or 7,000 police officers.
