Black Friday invades Thanksgiving Thursday

With ads in her hand a shopper walks through the Target parking lot after shopping at the store in Lakewood, CA. The couple started the night before at the Wal-Mart in Seaford, where they found deals on clothes, movies and other items.

Thank that little smartphone in your hand.

Retail analysts said online sales were estimated to have passed £1bn on a single day for the first time.

On Friday, there was evidence that shoppers were vacillating between stores and online.

Shelley Kohan, vice president of retail consulting at RetailNext, discussed the sales numbers.

Email marketing was the primary channel driving online sales, accounting for 25.1% of transactions, while social media (Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest, etc.) only drove 1.7% of sales, per Custora. He also was pleased with store traffic.

Maddie Rich, a sales associate at Luxe Boutique Chattanooga, said Friday afternoon with a store full of customers buzzing behind her that Thanksgiving weekend is huge for the locally owned shop.

Heather Herman, 37, of Arnold awoke before the sun rose Friday to hit Target at 3 a.m.

At the J. Crew at the Walt Whitman Shops in Huntington, New York – where signs advertised up to 50 percent off for items in the sale section -Nancy Moley, a personal stylist, said Black Friday was going “comfortably, not insane”.

Many box stores, including Macy’s, Wal-Mart and Target, are focusing on growing their online business this season. She said she can’t remember seeing so many deals on appliances and televisions. “There’s still room for a few more things in here and so far I’ve saved about $90”.

Having Best Buy create a separate checkout aisle for shoppers specifically buying TVs made it easier, Rodriguez said.

Many shoppers seemed to take the disturbance in stride, and some even snapped photos of the crowd.

If you’re the type that enjoys getting up early and getting almost trampled to death just to enjoy a discount, you probably did all your shopping on Black Friday already. Karol and Randy Kolb of Strasburg, Virginia, made a trip to the outlets as part of their holiday getaway to Ocean City, Maryland, not for any bargains or deals.

Torrance resident Viv Coorapati echoed similar sentiments.

“I use smartphones to do holiday shopping a lot, it is very convenient”, said Connie Fang, 24, a student in NY. “I think stores that are strong online, and strong in-store will be the winners of retail in the future”.

Sales and foot traffic since the holiday promotions kicked off Thursday are up from previous year at the Kmart in West View, said store manager Jodie Strother. Thanksgiving starts the craziness off with a bang and Cyber Monday gives it the big closing. “Our Black Friday is mostly our regular customers, and their family and friends who are in town”.

The unofficial kickoff to the all-important shopping season showed more shoppers spending sooner and more frequently buying online.

Amazon claims 2015 Black Friday was its biggest sales day in the United Kingdom ever, with more than six million items being ordered. It also expects about 135.8 million people will be shopping during the four-day weekend, compared with 133.7 million previous year. “Heading into Cyber Monday, online only retailers will take center stage and we are still calling for Cyber Monday to be the largest online day of the year, breaking the $3 billion mark and representing 12 percent YoY growth”, said Tamara Gaffney, a principal analyst at Adobe Digital Index, in a statement.