Yes, with continental.com (and many other sites, for that matter), putting in your credit card and selecting purchase just puts it in a ticketing queue. High volume or other problems may result in your itinerary not being ticketed.

Generally with CO, if it's not ticketed within 15-20 minutes, there's some sort of issue, so if I don't see an email with receipt link in that time, I call in and check and ask them to ticket.

I've had other sits take longer (e.g., AS and Orbitz > 1 hour during the day).

The rule of thumb with any travel site, is to make sure you ultimately get ticketed and have an itinerary with ticket numbers on it.