It’s amazing with all the advancements in technology and the increased competitive climate of the retail industry how much our shopping habits have evolved in the past years. Andrea Woroch is a consumer and money-saving expert and she shared these 8 shopping trends learned from the 2011 holiday shopping season with us:

1. Clicks Beat Bricks
This was the year e-commerce beat the pants off brick-and-mortar retailing. Although traditional stores did better than expected — up an estimated 3.8 percent — online shopping surged 15 percent over 2010.

2. Free Shipping Was Everywhere
Consumers clamored for free shipping offers and often abandoned their online shopping carts when such deals weren’t offered. That explains why nine out of 10 retailers provided free shipping during the holiday season. This prosperity no doubt will spill over into 2012, as websites like FreeShipping.org continue to attract bargain shoppers.

3. Free Return Shipping the Next Big Thing
Zappos and several shoe stores began offering free return shipping years ago, but this year even Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus got in on the trend. According to a MarketLive study, 73 percent of respondents named free returns as a deciding factor in their online purchasing.

4. iPads Rule
Laptop shopping is so passé! More than 18 percent of all e-commerce hits were initiated from a mobile device. That’s up of 8.4 percent from Christmas Day 2010 and an astounding increase of 117.8 percent. Yes, that figure is 117.8, not 11.78.

5. Dumbbell Shopping
Americans weren’t flocking to weight lifting; they were shopping early and late and avoiding the in-between, creating a dumbbell-shaped graph. As expected, buying surged on