Now that the holiday shopping season is ended, industry watchers are grading retailers’ Web performances. Overall the season fell short of last year, in terms of dollars spent. But still there were some traffic and performance highlights.

Web measurement firm comScore reports that e-commerce spending for the holiday shopping season, beginning Nov. 1 and ending Dec. 23, reached $25.5 billion, a decline of 3% vs. the corresponding shopping days in 2007.

“This marks the first time we’ve seen negative growth rates for the holiday season since we began tracking e-commerce in 2001,” said Gian Fulgoni, comScore’s chairman. “The combination of having five fewer shopping days between Thanksgiving and Christmas and the severe economic headwinds faced by consumers has made this a really tough season for retailers, both offline and online.”

That’s the bad news. But some retailers did enjoy higher traffic levels this year, despite softer online sales.

In fact, three of the top five most visited sites recorded traffic gains, according to comScore. Amazon sites grew 7 % to 76.2 million visitors, followed by Wal-Mart (up 4% to 51.5 million visitors) and Apple (up 19% to 35 million visitors). eBay remained the most visited retail site with 85.4 million visitors but saw a decline of 4% in visitors. Target also logged a slight decline of 1% to 46.8 million visitors.

In terms of keeping customers happy, Amazon and Netflix satisfied customers most during the holiday shopping season, according to ForeSee Results. Each year ForeSee ranks customer satisfaction at the top 40 retail Web sites using a methodology from the University of Michigan that gauges customer loyalty and purchase intent.

Web sites are rated on a 100-point scale. Amazon and Netflix were the only two retailers to score above 80; both earned 84 points. QVC placed third with 79 points, ForeSee reports.

Web sites that fell short of customers’ expectations include Circuit City, Gap, Home Depot, Home Shopping Network, Neiman Marcus, and Overstock. These six sites tied for last place in ForeSee’s rankings with a score of 69.

Foresee also notes that 10 Web sites improved online shopper satisfaction since last holiday shopping season, led by Wal-Mart (which gained 5% to reach 78 points) and HP’s online store (up 7% to 76 points). Other top gainers include Staples (up 6% to 77 points) and Target (up 4% to 75 points). However 15 sites saw satisfaction decline, including Home Shopping Network (which dropped 9% to 69 points) and Gap (fell 7% to 69 points).

Ann Bednarz is associate news editor at Network World.