Economic Watch: Cyber Monday Sets Online Shopping Records
The Monday after Thanksgiving, nicknamed Cyber Monday, was the largest online shopping day in history for U.S. retailers, with $6.59 billion worth of goods sold – a 16.8% increase from the year before.
Adobe Analytics, which measures 80% of the online transactions from 100 of the largest major U.S. retailers, also reported overall web traffic to retail sites increased by 11.9% on Cyber Monday, with the season average at 5.7%.
Mobile device use for shopping set a new record, representing 47.4% of visits (39.9% smartphones, 7.6% tablets) and 33.1% of revenue (24.1% smartphones, 9% tablets). .Smartphone traffic grew 22.2% year-over-year. Revenue coming from smartphones, which totaled $1.59 billion, saw 39.2% growth year-over-year, a new all-time high.
Mobile transactions are closing at a 12% higher rate than Cyber Monday 2016. For purchases made on smartphones, Apple iOS led with an average order value of $123, in comparison to Google Android at $110.
Shopping and buying on smartphones is becoming the new norm and can be attributed to continued optimization in the retail experience on mobile devices and platforms, according to Mickey Mericle, vice president of marketing and customer insights at Adobe.
“Consumers are also becoming more savvy and efficient online shoppers. People increasingly know where to find the best deals and what they want to purchase, which results in less price-matching behavior typically done on desktops,” Mericle said. “Millennials were likely another reason for the dramatic growth in mobile, with 75% expecting to shop via their smartphone.”
Adobe predicts this will be the first-ever holiday season to break $100 billion in online sales.
The holiday shopping season so far, from Nov. 1 through Nov. 27, has driven a total of $50 billion in online revenue. Adobe predicts this will be the first-ever holiday season to break $100 billion in online sales.
The figures were released the same day as …Read the rest of this story
