More than half (53%) of consumers will be looking online for one- day promotions and 32 percent will searching for buy-one-get -one- free promotions.

Even those who are browsers are using Cyber Monday to go online to find web promotions and savings. Fifty-one percent say they will go online to checkout deals, and 21 percent will comparison shop.

Retailers have been successful in getting the word out about their Cyber Monday promotions. The majority (76%) of consumers learn about Cyber Monday deals via the Internet, with 48 percent of online shoppers hearing about Cyber Monday deals from emails and 13 percent learn about deals from the news.

Cyber Monday sites that aggregate deals such as cybermonday.com and gottadeal.com are also popular with consumers, more than 78 percent say they find aggregator sites very helpful.

Because of all the promotions on Cyber Monday in the past, 45 percent of consumers say they prefer Cyber Monday over Black Friday and only 10 percent prefer Black Friday.

According to the survey the majority (83.7%) of retailers will have special promotions for CyberMonday, up from 72.2 percent last year. The most popular promotions are likely to be specific deals (38.8%), email campaigns (32.7%), and one-day sales (24.5%). Additionally, close to a quarter of retailers (22.5%) will offer free shipping on all purchases.
 

"Online retailers are resilient, but not immune, to the challenges of this holiday season," said Scott Silverman, Executive Director of Shop.org.

"Retailers will be heavily promotional to attract shoppers on a budget, but have also invested in new site features to improve the online buying experience."

This year, the majority (78%) of online retailers plan to offer free shipping with conditions at some point during the holiday season, consistent with last year’s levels. Retailers are making up for increased shipping costs by renegotiating deals with shipping providers (40.4%), closely managing their number of employees (33.3%), and cutting back on other promotions (15.8%).

In addition, 21.3 percent of retailers say they will require a higher purchase amount for customers to be eligible for free shipping and 10.6 percent will reduce usage of free shipping with no conditions.

Along with free shipping promotions, many online retailers have introduced new Web site features to improve the customer experience. Features like improved site search, which 42.9 percent of online retailers added or improved since last holiday season, will help customers navigate sites better.

Other features like product video (42.6%) and customer reviews (32.7%) can give shoppers more information to make buying decisions. For bargain hunters, online retailers have added and enhanced both clearance sale pages (27.1%) and featured sale pages (31.3%). In addition, online retailers are still experimenting with social networking with 25 percent adding a Facebook page this year.