Cyber Monday sales more positive than Black Friday, says Adobe Digital Index

According to software maker Adobe’s Digital Index, which tracks sales across 4,500 websites including 80 per cent of all online transactions from the top 100 USA retailers, this was the biggest Cyber Monday yet with $3.07 billion in sales in the U.S. alone.

Research firm comScore said shopping by phone, laptop or tablet jumped 21 percent to $3.11 billion Monday, fueled by a 53 percent surge in spending via mobile devices.

While Amazon had a big day, brick-and-mortar retailers actually saw some good online action, too, with growth of 18% in online sales on Cyber Monday – more than the online-only retailers. About 37 percent of Thanksgiving sales came from smartphones and tablets, up from 29 percent in 2014, according to Adobe.

While Cyber Monday broke records, in-store retail sales declined on Black Friday weekend.

Cyber Monday did not go without a hitch, however. Both of these decreases are a result of the 14% increase in online shopping traffic on Black Friday grossing $2.72 billion on its own.

Target.com offered 15 percent off nearly everything on Monday, bringing a flood of traffic, the Minneapolis-based company said in a statement.

The latest data show significantly more people are comfortable not only browsing, but buying products on their smartphones, fundamentally changing the way retailers clock sales during the busiest shopping period of the year.

One thing that could hamper the rise of Cyber Monday in the long run is the probability of products to be out of stock immediately.

Retailers cut back on Thanksgiving hours, rolled out discounts earlier this year and ran more of their bargains online, putting less pressure on consumers to rush out for discounts after their turkey dinners or the next morning. It also bumps up online sales for the month of November by 30%, to $39.5 billion. Social’s share of sales increased 33 percent year-over-year with a major spike at 6 p.m. Eastern when consumers got home from work and spent time on their favorite social networking sites.

“I did do it when we were poorer”, she said.