If the Babyland store in East Liberty puts something up for sale on its Web site, people find it. "It's amazing how quickly it sells," said store manager Adam Cannon.

Consumers have mastered the art of comparison shopping on the Web and, even now, they're warming up their computers. Cyber Monday is just around the corner and, in this deal-driven year, merchants have prepared still more promotions to bring in virtual customers.

The Monday after Thanksgiving -- the day that the retail industry wants to be an online version of Black Friday shopping madness at the malls -- could find more than 80 percent of online retailers offering special discounts, according to a survey by Shopzilla for the Web commerce division of the National Retail Federation. That's up from more than 70 percent last year.

Some forecasters have predicted online sales results overall for the holiday will look stronger than the anemic performance expected in many retail stores as consumer confidence drags. A Purdue University researcher projected Internet holiday sales could grow at least 10 percent, while various organizations are calling for the nation's total holiday sales to either grow slightly or even shrink.

But if online sales are going to produce those kinds of results, consumers may need some kind of stimulus. In the first 23 days of November, shoppers spent $8.2 billion online, a 4 percent drop compared with the same time last year, according to Internet tracking firm comScore in Reston. Va.

"With consumer confidence low and disposable income tight, the first weeks of November have been very disappointing, with online retail spending declining vs. a year ago," said comScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni, in a statement.

"It's also likely that some budget-conscious consumers are planning to wait to buy until later in the season to take advantage of retailers' even more aggressive discounting."

An Amazon.com spokesman said yesterday that his company usually sees peak buying hit around the second week of December.

Still, the retail federation's Shop.org division has stepped up its efforts to boost online sales through its CyberMonday.com site linking shoppers to more than 600 retailers. The site was visited by more than 1.5 million people last holiday season, enough to convince the operators to increase capacity.

Elsewhere, JC Penney's online store promises "screenbusters," a play off the "doorbusters" term for deeply discounted items used to stir up excitement in its traditional stores. Amazon is touting "Black Fri-Daily Deals" and even eBay is promoting $1 holiday doorbusters daily through Dec. 8.

Signs that consumers are getting online to check out all the offers came yesterday when Web performance company Keynote Systems Inc., of San Mateo, Calif., reported leading holiday shopping sites on average had slowed down to 70 percent of their normal download speeds yesterday.

The retail industry might love Cyber Monday and the ability to holiday shop via computer but employers have mixed emotions about it.

Almost 56 percent of workers with Internet access, or 72.8 million people, are expected to shop for holiday gifts from work this year, according to a BIGresearch survey done for the retail industry group. Three years ago, only about 45 percent did so.

The amount of work time lost to such chores isn't known, but businesses might want to think twice about stopping the activity, said Richard Feinberg, a researcher with the Purdue Retail Institute, in his written assessment of the action. He suggested resentment caused by blocking employees might also lead to lost productivity.

Meanwhile, the staff at Babyland wasn't exactly expecting either a Black Friday or a Cyber Monday surge. Babies don't generally time their arrivals to the retail shopping season.

The convenience of online shopping has helped the store stay in touch with families who move out of the area but remain loyal to the longtime Pittsburgh retailer, said Mr. Cannon. Even suburban customers who could take advantage of a store offer to be reimbursed for their gas sometimes prefer to just place an order from home.

Predicting consumer behavior is harder than ever this year, as illustrated by two companies that will be delivering a lot of the goods sold online. Both United Parcel Service and FedEx have decided not to issue their usual forecasts on how many packages they'll ship on their peak days this holiday season.