E-tail: the state we're in

Investors in Amazon.com must have been demolishing their Thanksgiving turkey with extra relish last weekend.

The online e-tail giant reported that over 1.7 million shoppers logged onto the site in two days - that sent its share price soaring over 34 per cent.

It was a hefty kickstart to the seasonal shopping season, and by Monday other US e-tailers, including Kmart, Walmart and Yahoo! were reporting bumper weekends.

NetRatings agreed and reported that online shopping traffic surged 22 per cent the day before Thanksgiving and 20 per cent the day after compared with traffic for the rest of the week.

So it seems that regardless of slumping economies and terrorist attacks, US online shoppers are well on the way to spending the $11bn that Forrester recently forecast they would this year.

Forrester today predicted a lucrative season for UK e-tailers, with British internet users expected to contribute 34 per cent of European online sales this Christmas.

Perhaps that's not surprising, considering Forrester also reports that the UK is seven per cent above the European average for internet access rates.

So it seems there are more and more of us shopping online on both side of the Atlantic and we're set to spend 10 per cent more money on online purchases then we did last year.

Still, some analysts are questioning e-tailers' ability to get it right. Delivery disputes may have decreased last year, but the 1999 fulfilment fiasco and FTC fines still leave a bitter taste and bad memories.

Ultimately, the fines collected by the FTC from e-tailers in January will indicate just how good it really was. Strangely, the analysts haven't issued any forecasts for that.

E-tail is a bit like the old nursery rhyme, when it's good, it's very good - and we happily fork out billions, but when it's bad it's horrid - and then we're left without pressies under the tree.