The virtual registers are ringing off the hook.
Cyber Monday is projected to hit $7.9 billion in ecommerce sales, making it the largest online shopping day of all time in the U.S., according to data from Adobe Analytics, up 19.3% from 2017.
Adobe said Thanksgiving Day brought in $3.7 billion, a 28% year-over-year increase, while Black Friday hit $6.2 billion in online sales, up 23.6%.
Saturday and Sunday set a new record as the biggest online shopping weekend in the U.S. at $6.4 billion, up over 25% on each day according to Adobe, growing faster than Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
The full season to date (Nov. 1-26) has resulted in $58.5 billion in online sales, a 19.9% increase with every day generating over $1 billion, Adobe reported.
Orders that included buy online pick up in store (BOPIS) saw a record 50% increase over the weekend compared to 2017. As online and offline retail experience continues to blend, retailers with physical stores drove 28% higher conversions online, Adobe found.
Revenue from orders on smartphones is projected to hit a record $2.2 billion for Cyber Monday, up an astounding 55.6% from $1.4 billion in 2017, while the share of traffic on smartphones grew 16%.
Mobile overall represented 54.3% of site visits (46.6% on smartphones, 7.7% on tablets) up 18.9% year-over-year and 34% of revenue (27.7% smartphones, 8.2% tablets), making it the first Cyber Monday with over half of the visits from mobile.
“Converting mobile traffic to sales has long been a thorn in the side of retailers, but investments in making the experience faster and easier have paid off,” said Taylor Schreiner, Director of Adobe Digital Insights. “Cyber Monday shoppers have relied heavily on their mobile devices, resulting in an unprecedented 55.6% year-over-year increase from smartphone alone.”
The hours from 10 p.m. ET on Monday to 1 a.m. ET on Tuesday are expected to hit $1.7 billion in ecommerce sales, roughly $300 million more than an average full day during the year.
Black Friday saw the best deals for television, with prices down 18% and computers down 17.9%. On Sunday, toy discounts were all the rage, discounted an average of 30.6%.
During Cyber Monday, 2.3% of product page visits resulted in an out-of-stock message on Cyber Monday, up from an average of 2.1% during the year. Adobe estimates this cost retailers about $187 million in lost sales. The comparable numbers were 3.3% for Thanksgiving and 2.8% for Black Friday, with lost sales estimated at $120 million and $177 million, respectively.
Direct website traffic on Cyber Monday ranked highest for driving revenue at a 25.9% share of sales, up 0.7% from 2017, followed by paid search at 21.6% (up 6.2%), natural search at 21.1% (down 5.3%) and email at 25.9% (up 2%). Social media again had a minimal impact on online sales, with a 1.3% share.
Large retailers saw 6% higher conversion rates on smartphones for Cyber Monday, a sign that mobile investments are paying off. Smaller retailers offering more specialized products were better at getting shoppers to close sales via desktop, with a 7% bump in conversion rates.
Black Friday Results
Black Friday hit $6.2 billion in ecommerce sales, Adobe reported, up 23.6% from $5.03 billion in 2017. It was also the first day ever to hit more than $2 billion in smartphone-based sales.
“Shoppers capitalized on deep discounts on Black Friday,” said Taylor Schreiner, Director of Adobe Digital Insights. “Even consumers who shopped online made trips to retail stores with buy online pickup in store orders up 73% from Thursday to Friday.
Schreiner said retailers have done their part to build better mobile experiences for consumers, turning nearly 10% more smartphone visitors into buyers on Black Friday vs. last year.
For the first time, online prices on Thanksgiving Day were as low as Black Friday, Adobe found, with consumers taking advantage of those deals in record numbers. Consumers are also getting more comfortable buying more and bigger ticket items online. Average order value set a new record on Black Friday at $146, up 8.5% from 2017.
A majority of sales growth came from mobile devices. Black Friday purchases on smartphones crushed the current record of $1.4 billion set on Cyber Monday 2017, eclipsing $2.1 billion. Over a third of Black Friday online sales were made on smartphones, up from 29.1% last year.
On Black Friday, the highest average discounts were in toys (27.1%), followed by TVs (18%) and computers (17.8%).
Direct site traffic ranked highest for driving sales on Black Friday, with a 27.2% share of sales (up 0.3%), followed by paid search at 24% (up 6.1%), natural search at 20.8% (down 5.5%) and email at 20.4% (up 2.6%).
Thanksgiving Day Results
Thanksgiving Day sales were up 28% from last year, making it the fastest growing retail day in ecommerce history.
It was also a very mobile-friendly holiday, with orders from smartphones representing more than a third of all ecommerce sales – 36.7% – and driving the most traffic to merchant sites at 54.4%, Adobe reported.
Helping drive this trend is the increased optimization of retailers’ browsing and checkout on smartphones, Adobe said, resulting in 5.2% shorter smartphone visits on Thanksgiving compared to last year.
Thanksgiving also marked the first day of the peak holiday season with $1 billion in sales from smartphones. In 2017, there was more than $1 billion in sales on Cyber Monday.
Consumers also spent more on Thanksgiving, Adobe reported, pushing up AOV 8% vs. 2017.
The convenience of BOPIS was a huge hit on Thanksgiving, with shoppers nearly doubling the amount of these orders from Wednesday to Thursday, up 91%.
In terms of conversion rates, desktop and tablets both converted at 4.3%, up 2.6% and 5.4%, respectively on Thanksgiving, Adobe found, followed by smartphones at 2% but up an impressive 7.6% from 2017.
Shopify, with 600,000 SMB ecommerce sellers on its platform, reported more than $250 million in sales on Thanksgiving, over $465,000 per minute at the peak or $17 million per hour. The average order size on Shopify for Thanksgiving was $82.27, and apparel items took the top 5 spots in overall sales. Shopify said 21.2% of ecommerce orders on its platform were being shipped cross border on Thanksgiving.
For Black Friday through Cyber Monday, merchants generated over $1.5 billion on Shopify, generating over $870,000 per minute or $37 million per hour at the peak on Black Friday. The AOV was $83.09 for those day, with 66% of sales made on mobile vs. 34% on desktop.