Not much time left before the holidays but I just came across this interesting article in Chief Marketer. Apparently, there are four of five significant online shopping peaks during the holidays, not just Cyber Monday (the first Monday after Thanksgiving).

These Mondays between Thanksgiving and Christmas generate major e-commerce sales peaks for online retailers, but the first Monday following Thanksgiving is generally not the busiest. In 2006, the third Cyber Monday was the peak day of the season. This year, with an early Thanksgiving and a Tuesday Christmas, we have an extra Monday; the fourth Cyber Monday could well be the peak of the season.

Implications for retail marketers (many more details in the article) - 

• Search marketing teams should maximize exposure on these Mondays by allocating a generous budget for their most important campaigns. If budget caps are set too low, ads won’t be served to all searchers.
• It is recommended that programs being actively managed to a healthy ROI have no budget caps during the holidays, especially this season with an extra Monday to cover.
• Search teams should consider “Brand + location” and “Product + location” keywords to connect online with these local shoppers. Geotargeting can also help.
• Marketers should bid on category/generic keywords to introduce their brands to consumers and become part of the consideration set as consumers move through the purchase process.
• Retail stores should sweeten the pot to seal the deal in the store instead of risking consumers defecting to an online competitor (low price guarantees, formal customer satisfaction/up-sell training program, etc.)
• Give shoppers handouts directing them to your site for follow up purchases or special incentives and deals, and consider dropping “most popular products” or “special deals” e-mails Sunday night.
  
• Be sure to blanket relevant keywords with your search ads, becoming ubiquitous in the consumer’s mind with the specific products they seek, wherever and whenever they search this holiday season.