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With Cyber Monday 2009 in the books, all that’s left is to wait for the sales results. Web tracking firm comScore reported 2008 Cyber Monday sales of $846 Million. Are we poised to hit $900 million or more this year? After seeing an 11 percent increase in online sales to $595 million on Black Friday, it’s certainly possible. ComScore is expected to post 2009 sales results on Wednesday.

With the increase of online shopping activities and the growth of mobile devices used to access the web, retailers are faced with yet another obstacle, how to meet the growing expectations of the mobile web?

According to Nielsen web visitors using a mobile device increased from 42.5 million in July 2008 to 56.9 million in July 2009. Improved mobile devices and faster networks are fueling the growth of mobile web access.

Mobile users have high expectations when accessing the web as these results from a recent Gomez white paper show.

• Half of mobile web users are willing to wait only 6-10 seconds or less for a web page to load on their phone before giving up, and only one in five is willing to wait more than 20 seconds.
• 58% of mobile phone users expect websites to load as quickly, almost as quickly or faster on their mobile phone, compared to the PC or Laptop they use at home or the office.
• 61% of users say they are unlikely to return to the mobile web site again and 40% said they would use a competitor’s web site when seeking similar content if they are not satisfied with its performance.
• 50% of those surveyed said they would access sites with their mobile device if the sites loaded faster and were as reliable on their mobile phones as they were from their desktop or laptop machines.

Major online retailer are taking notice and working harder to meet the expectations of mobile users.
Benchmark studies conducted by Gomez for the November 27-29, 2009 period for both Mobile and Internet Retailer’s home page performance still show a performance gap between the two but performance of the mobile sites was within the expectations listed above.

With small displays and limited content, shopping online using a mobile device isn’t for everyone.  But if you’ve got some time to kill while standing in line to check out at your local retailer, it could be worth a try.