Black Friday Results Show Strength Of Online Shopping

This year’s Cyber Monday was the largest single online sales day in history, far surpassing Adobe Digital Insight’s initial estimates by $27 million.

Holiday shopping season saw online sales of $36.5 billion, up seven percent from previous year – more than a third of that coming from mobile devices. “Black Friday may overtake Cyber Monday for the first time ever due to Black Friday’s higher than expected revenue of $3.34 billion”, said Becky Tasker, managing analyst of Adobe Digital Insights, in a statement.

Store traffic over the holiday shopping weekend was about 2 percent higher compared previous year, the National Retail Federation (NRF) said.

While Black Friday traditionally involved big discounts at physical stores and Cyber Monday when shoppers could fetch a bargain online, a number of Australian retailers chose to change things up. Instead of wading into malls, shoppers turned to online shopping that causes for online sales to rack up from the Thanksgiving Day and the day before.

As it turns out, Monday, November 28 showed that online shopping numbers just beat those of Black Friday.

Early morning remains the busiest time for online shopping – 38.9% of those shopping on Cyber Monday shopped first thing in the morning, while 33.9% shopped in the morning, 16% shopped over lunch and 31% shopped in the early afternoon. While only 20 percent of women said they plan to do some Cyber Monday shopping for themselves, 30 percent of men said the same.

Adobe said it tracks 80 percent of all online transactions at the top 100 United States retailers.

Adobe has also confirmed that the best-selling gadgets for this early part of Monday include the Microsoft Xbox, Sony PS4, and Samsung 4K resolution TVs.

Consumers spent $1.93 billion on Thanksgiving Day, 11.5% more than in 2015, with an average order value that was relatively flat at $160, compared to $162 in 2015.

Online sales are forecast to increase between 7 and 10% over a year ago to as much as $117 billion.

Consumers have expanded their online shopping to cover the four days between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday, according to another report from IBM.

According to CTA’s overall holiday season outlook, total tech spending during the entire holiday shopping season will increase 3.1 per cent to reach a record $36.05 billion in 2016.

A survey for the National Retail Federation found that more people shopped online than in stores over the Black Friday weekend as some shoppers looked to avoid the crowds and hassle.