Record Cyber Monday Spending Tops $3B

Shoppers spent more than $3 billion online this “Cyber Monday”, making it the biggest online shopping day ever.

The holiday season shopping extravaganza might also be catching on internationally as well. However, while mobile shopping saw strong growth over the holiday with a 34 percent share of online sales, the role of tablets declined. Crowds seemed smaller on Black Friday this year and sales fell to $10.4 billion, down from $11.6 billion in 2014, according to preliminary figures from ShopperTrak.

“Consumers are recognizing the Internet is the place to go for a deal any time, any day”, said Gene Alvarez, managing vice president of research firm Gartner. Meanwhile, Target devoted an entire week to its cyber sale. “Cyber Monday” got almost 1 million mentions on various platforms, 8% than previous year.

Retailers, including Amazon, Wal-Mart Stores, Target, and Jet, all failed to significantly discount the great majority of popular products. “We’ll see a less dramatic spike on Cyber Monday”.

USA purchasing patterns are shifting as more spending moves online and away from traditional stores.

Shopping using mobile devices accounted for 26 percent of total online sales, up from 19 percent a year earlier, Adobe’s report said.

Additionally, a day-by-day review shows that consumers reported spending an average of $147 on Black Friday but then dipped to $99 on Saturday, $99 on Sunday and $102 on Cyber Monday. “The ease of online shopping through mobile devices now lets millions of people research what they want as well as make timely purchases any day of the weekend – a win-win for both retailers and shoppers”. Of the people who shopped online, 39.8% did so on Thanksgiving, while 73.1% shopped online on Black Friday.

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 United States retailers, this was the biggest Cyber Monday yet with $3.07 billion in sales in the USA alone. In fact, advertisers spent 64% more this year to connect with consumers via mobile search than they did in 2014. Although much of that was attributed to increased mobile and web traffic, the lack of discounts to be found over the weekend could also have contributed to flatter sales, according to Boomerang. When outdoor retailer Recreational Equipment, Inc., or REI, announced their Opt Outside campaign, they notified consumers that they would be closing the doors of their brick-and-mortar stores for the busiest shopping day of the year to allow their employees to enjoy the day with family.

“So sorry, but high traffic’s causing delays”, the Target site informed users at one point. On Cyber Monday, it added new promotional deals after every five minutes to attract more and more customers.