By Andrew LaVallee
Online retailers in the U.S. rang up $595 million on Black Friday, an 11% increase from the day a year ago, comScore said.

According to the market-research firm, U.S. consumers have spent $10.57 billion online from the beginning of the month to Nov. 27, then $318 million on Thanksgiving and $595 million the following day. Pre-Thanksgiving e-commerce sales were up 3%, while Thanksgiving-day sales rose 10%.

Black Friday marked the second-highest day in terms of online spending this year, after Nov. 19, when consumers spent $641 million.

“This is a very encouraging start,” comScore’s chairman, Gian Fulgoni, said in a statement. He noted, however, that aggressive marketing may be responsible for some of the uptick and that the coming weeks would be “the real test” for holiday-season e-commerce.

The retail sites for Amazon.com, Apple, Best Buy, Target and Wal-Mart each saw more than 4 million unique visits Friday, comScore said, with Amazon receiving the most traffic (up 28% from 2008). Apple, Best Buy and Wal-Mart sites also experienced double-digit traffic gains. According to Experian Hitwise, another Web monitoring firm, other e-commerce standouts included Sears, Staples and Dell.

Of a handful of Black Friday deal-spotting sites monitored by comScore, BFads.net saw 3.9 million unique visits on Friday, a 4% increased from last year, comScore said. BlackFriday.info traffic fell 17% to 3.5 million uniques, while Black-Friday.net more than doubled to 2.3 million unique visits. Traffic to Black Friday sites overall was up 9%, Hitwise said.

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