Although the season kicked off with a bang, there were fears that consumer confidence would fall as the end of the year approached. That did not happen, with people continuing to fill their virtual shopping carts until the very last minute; 10 individual days surpassed $1 billion in spending.

According to comScore, the final tally for online spending for the months of November and December was $37.2 billion, representing a 15 percent increase over last year.

ComScore tracks purchases made on Web sites from a fixed Internet connection, excluding spending done via mobile phones and tablets, so presumably the numbers could be higher.

While the numbers being reported sound positive, some analysts worry if they were enough to give giants like Amazon the growth rates needed to hit expectations. Wall Street analysts are expecting Amazon to post a fourth-quarter growth rate of 38 percent, which would mean it would have to be growing twice as fast as the average market.

But Chase Paymentech’s annual Cyber Holiday Pulse Index painted a rosier picture of the holiday season. Based on tracking 50 of the leading online merchants in the U.S., the report found that during the final two months of the year, transactions were up 37 percent and sales rose 25 percent.

One of the reasons for the huge gains, it said, was because Christmas fell on a Sunday this year, allowing merchants to guarantee shipping much later into the week and giving consumers more time to make online transactions.

To be sure, the increase in online shopping is coming from somewhere — most likely at the expense of traditional retail, which is expected to report a less impressive 4 percent growth rate this year.

“It’s clear that e-commerce continues to gain market share from traditional retail due to the attractiveness of the Internet’s convenience and lower prices,” said comScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni. “Consumers were especially attracted to the deals and discounts available through digital channels -– particularly free shipping, which occurred on well over half of transactions this season.”

The most impressive finding of the season was that 10 individual days surpassed $1 billion in spending, compared to only one day in 2010.

Here is a list of the 10 biggest online shopping days in 2011, led by Cyber Monday:

(Image credit: iStockphoto.com/mbortolino)

But even though they are expected to spend more this season than during last year’s downtrodden holiday season, consumers are likely to keep their online spending tempered, the group said.

ComScore said consumers spent $8.21 billion online from Nov. 1-22, a 2 percent jump from the same period a year earlier. It expects the total for both November and December to reach $28.8 billion, a 3 percent gain from last year’s holiday season. Results fell 3 percent last year and comScore noted prior-years growth was 20 percent or higher.

“Online spending this holiday season will likely be tempered by the stark reality of 10 percent unemployment and less disposable income in many consumers’ wallets,” said comScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni.

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ComScore today reports that for the first 23 days of November, e-commerce spending (excluding travel, auctions and large corporate purchases) was down four percent from the same period last year. ComScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni said that “with consumer confidence low and disposable income tight, the first weeks of November have been very disappointing.”

ComScore’s forecast is that overall online spending this year will be flat versus a year ago. That compares with a 19 percent rise in spending online last year, and a nine percent rise in e-commerce for the year through October.

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According to research outfit comScore, online spending grew by just one percent over October 2007. That was its lowest monthly growth rate since 2001, the year comScore first began tracking it. Worse, it was the sixth consecutive month in which growth declined.

Dismal news for Internet retailers, who now find themselves offering steep discounts to court customers with less discretionary income. Of course, lower price-points mean less profit. But better some profit than none at all. “A lot of these retailers aren’t running on big margins to begin with, so it’s pretty challenging,” Gian Fulgoni, chairman of comScore (SCOR), told the New York Times. “But it’s a Catch-22 situation: They have to run these deals because that’s what consumers are looking for this season.”

Sad to say, but the e-commerce sector’s holidays will be anything but happy ones.