Online retailers have become more and more successful as the World Wide Web has matured over the last 10 years.

And now, Internet shopping even has its own Black Friday.

The National Retail Federation was smart enough to point out a special day on the calendar year when the entire country is logged on and buying stuff from Amazon, E-Bay and other popular sites.

It’s called Cyber Monday. Here’s the story: On the Monday after Thanksgiving, everyone is back at work in front of his or her computer. But instead of working, they’re buying presents they couldn’t get at the Friday doorbusters.

The media has taken note and has compiled some interesting statistics. According to the data, online sales are booming this holiday season. ComScore Networks -- a Virginia-based company that monitors Web-related data -- reports that online sales this Cyber Monday hit $608 million. This beats out last year’s Cyber Monday by 26%.

Growth isn’t just limited to this one day, either. U.S. online retail sales are expected to more than double over the next few years, reaching $316 billion by 2010, according to Forrester Research.

Online sales are expected to account for 12% of total retail sales in 2010. To put this in perspective, online sales were less than 7% of total retail sales in 2004. (Continued)

Throughout all of this growth, major problems persist in the online retail industry.

Customers are abandoning their shopping carts online at a rate of 50% or higher. In other words, plenty of people are shopping online, but a lot of websites are having trouble when it comes to closing the deal.

This brings us to a small-cap stock on this sector. It’s safer than risking capital on a fledgling online retailer that would have to compete against the likes of Amazon or Overstock.com. Why? Because this is a company that helps some of the biggest online retailers in the world make more money.

The company is LivePerson (LPSN: NASDAQ). LivePerson provides software that helps online retailers better assist and communicate with customers.
This company IPO'd at the end of the dot com era.
It has survived the past 5 years and is the best of the breed.
The support area is $4.00 and is trading at 4.70.
It is a small cap and not to be a major portion of your portfolio. But nibble away at it on dips for a long term hold.