Online sales keep rolling

An accurate view of whether Walmart is capturing a fair share of this holiday season’s anticipated sales growth is hard to come by given the lack of monthly results from the company, but a somewhat clearer picture emerges online based on traffic and sales estimates from third parties.

As noted previously, the online measurement firm comScore showed a 44% spike in traffic at Walmart.com during November when compared with October, and now the firm indicates that total retail industry online sales are up 12% compared with last year. From Nov. 1 through Dec. 19, comScore indicated that total online sales were $28.4 billion compared to $25.3 billion during the corresponding period last year.

Assuming that at a minimum Walmart’s online sales are proportional to the surge in its Web traffic an overall industry growth it is safe to say the Web is working for Walmart this year.