It's good to be in e-tail. While many brick and mortar retailers were finding solace yesterday in posting less severe losses than analysts expected, a report by Forrester Research and Shop.org says online dollar sales were up an average of 11 percent for the first three months of the year.

"It seems that consumer confidence is getting better," Sucharita Mulpuru, an analyst with Forrester, told Bloomberg News. "There is so much price competition out there that you can find great deals. Hopefully the worst is behind us."

Separately, new research from Opinion Research Corporation (ORC) concludes that a growing number of consumers are going online to shop, although many (45 percent) are spending less on shopping trips. Twenty-four percent of respondents said they went online only to buy necessities, with the same number of people saying they went online in search of the best deal.

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