Online shoppers turned out in force on Cyber Monday — the day after a strong holiday shopping weekend — with a retail group predicting a 10 percent increase over last year.

Merchant Web sites drew 1,333,336 global page visits per minute during the noon ET hour, according to e-commerce tracking company Akamai. While that was a solid number, it was actually a little below the noontime peak of 1,337,601 page visits per minute globally three days earlier, on Black Friday, which is supposed to be the big day for traditional stores.

Some 106.9 million Americans plan to shop online on Cyber Monday, compared to 96.5 million last year, the National Retail Foundation said. Most will be doing so from work — the NRF said about 70 million Americans will shop from their jobs this year.

Online shopping allows shoppers to avoid the madhouse atmosphere of crowds scrambling for doorbusters. Deals can be found online, as well as in stores, according to the NRF. The retail group reported that 88% of retailers will have a special promotion for Cyber Monday.

But until recently, Cyber Monday was overhyped in terms of discounts for consumers, said Brad Wilson, founder and editor-in-chief of BradsDeals.com.

“Cyber Monday was, without a doubt, overhyped for the first several years,” said Wilson. “Just in the last year, maybe two, I’ve seen it get much better from a consumer standpoint. You can name any online store and they are doing their largest coupon of the holiday season.”

Wilson said there were 60.5 percent more online coupons for this year’s Cyber Monday than there were last year.

Cyber Monday follows a seemingly successful Black Friday weekend.

The NRF reported 212 million shoppers went to stores and websites between Thanksgiving and Sunday, up from 195 million shoppers during the same period last year. The average shopper spent $365.34 during Black Friday weekend 2010, compared to $343.31 during the same weekend last year, the NRF said. Total spending for the weekend was $45 billion.

Millions of shoppers flooded stores such as Toys R Us and Wal-Mart on Black Friday, lured by promotional discounts.

The recent increase in online shopping was significant. The NRF reported that 33.6 percent of shoppers this past weekend were online — an increase from last year, when 28.5 percent of the shoppers were online.

Other researchers also reported a surge in online holiday shopping. comScore, a digital marketplace research firm, said that online sales totaled $648 million on Black Friday — a 9 percent jump from last year. That makes Black Friday the heaviest day of online spending so far in 2010, according to the report.

Amazon was the most popular shopping site on Black Friday, experiencing a 25 percent boost in traffic, according to comScore. Other leading sites included Wal-Mart, Target and Best Buy.