Online sales on Cyber Monday surged nearly 20 percent from last year, according to findings from an analytics group released Tuesday.

“Cyber Monday came in as the biggest shopping day of the year so far,” said John Squire, chief strategy officer of Coremetrics, a unit of IBM Corp.

Cyber Monday is the first Monday after Thanksgiving and is a relatively recent retail phenomenon, compared to Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. Many retailers traditionally open their doors at midnight on Black Friday, attracting shoppers with heavily advertised discounts.

Cyber Monday online sales in the U.S. were up 19.4 percent in 2010 compared to last year, reported Coremetrics.

More people were shopping online and the individual orders were larger than last year. Coremetrics said the average order value on Cyber Monday was $194.89, an increase of 8.3 percent from last year’s average of $180.03.

Cyber Monday sales also outdid this year’s Black Friday online sales by 31.1 percent, according to Coremetrics.

Shoppers also used mobile devices to make their purchases, with nearly 4 percent of all Cyber Monday shoppers using smartphones and other devices.

Google’s online blog reported that consumers increased their online shopping activity this holiday season and are more savvy in how they approach their shopping experiences.

Mobile phones play a key role. “People are using their mobile phones to compare prices, look for store locations and inventory in stock locally and find deals,” read the Google blog.

The blog said that 52 percent of U.S. smartphone users plan to use their phone to compare prices during the holiday season and 40 percent plan to read product reviews on their phones.