Cyber Monday sales at record as brick-and-mortar sales dip

Brick-and-mortar retail stores took a back seat to
online holiday sales during the Black Friday-Cyber Monday shopping period.

First, retailers accounted this year for the strain created by consumer spending surges by pushing pre-buys and reserved deals, making it easier to manage in-store inventory, shipping and delivery, according to Adobe head of mobile Matt Asay. Amazon was one of the strongest performers.Experian-IMRG predicted £943 million will be spent online during Cyber Monday, 31% higher than the £720 million spent previous year.

If Black Friday week wasn’t enough for shoppers, round two is expected to rake in more than $3 billion dollars of revenue, this time it’s all online.

“It certainly is becoming more like Cyber November because people are getting a jump on their holiday shopping much earlier year over year”, Joanna Lambert, vice president of global consumer product and engineering at PayPal, said in an interview.

“We can’t emphasize how important the mobile experience is for retailers, especially at this time of the year, when masses of consumers are shopping via their mobile devices”, said ADI analyst Tyler White in a statement.

Monday marked the largest online sales day in history, according to early estimates from Adobe.

Target’s website posted an error message citing abnormally high traffic.

The sales total also marks a 16% increase from Cyber Monday a year ago. “There are several contributing factors, including fewer available store hours on Thanksgiving Day and a later Hanukkah that is anticipated to push sales into December”, ShopperTrak founder Bill Martin said in a statement Tuesday.

Only 2.19 per cent of visits to websites resulted in a sale, compared with 2.18 per cent a year ago.

The average order value was $133, slightly lower than Black Friday ($137) and Thanksgiving Day ($162), indicating that shoppers were buying less expensive items.

Cyber Monday shoppers mainly went after electronics, including TVs, tablets and the Apple Watch. According to the report, 56 percent of social media showed feelings of “joy or admiration” for Cyber Monday as opposed to 40 percent for Black Friday.

“We did pretty good”, Wilson said of the weekend shopping adventure.