Akamai Retail Net Usage
Index - click to enlarge

Traffic to online retailer sites in North America spiked 35 percent above normal levels on Cyber Monday, according to Akamai's Net Usage Index for retail, reports DM News. The index tracks 100 U.S.-based online retailers such as etoys.com, jcpenney.com and circuitcity.com. Websites in the index were drawing 1.63 million visitors per minute, according to Akamai.

The global audience of leading shopping sites has been increasing at an average of 3.6 percent weekly since October 31. Traffic was expected to peak around 4 p.m. yesterday.

Akamai also released a desktop Widget that lets users monitor traffic to e-commerce sites in real time.