Cyber Monday is supposed to be online retail's big answer to Black Friday, that holy day of lining up outside a store at 4 a.m. for the best bargains. This year, traffic to online retailers and order volume were both up, but overall sales grew less than a half-percent compared to last year.

Traffic to online-only web stores was up 5 percent on Monday, according to HitWise, while visits to websites associated with bricks-and-mortar stores was down around 4 percent. Amazon was the big winner on Monday, taking in nearly 11 percent of U.S. traffic to retail sites, while its traffic increased 21 percent compared to Cyber Monday in 2007.

But while traffic was up, spending was down. Transaction volume at 25 major online retailers rose by 14.5 percent, according the Cyber Holiday Pulse Index from Chase Paymentech, but the average value of those transactions was down 12 percent compared to last year.

One reason for the rise in traffic may be consumers hunting for more deals. According to Google keyword trends, searches for "coupons," "Black Friday ads," "discounts," and "free shipping" were all on the rise.

Online retailers don't have a reason to fret just yet. According to ClickZ, online sales volume has risen 11 percent since the beginning of November. On top of that, web-only retailers experienced even larger traffic climbs on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, according to HitWise.