Early Holiday Spending Indicators Show Online Shopping Trends

Many websites are reporting U.S. holiday spending for the four day weekend following Thanksgiving, which includes shopping statistics for their Black Friday (the day following the Thanksgiving holiday where stores offer special discounts for one day only) and then Cyber Monday, which is the following Monday where many online retailers offer large deals for just that day.  The four day weekend this year saw sales rise 14.5% over the same weekend last year. ComScore estimates that online holiday sales for the entire season will account for over 10% of all holiday sales.

Smartphones and tablets were widely search with 25% of all online traffic looking for smartphones and 15.2% searched for tablets.  However, online sales were dominated by tablets, with 15.7% of the market share and considerably more than the 7.4% of online purchases that smartphones accounted for. The average tablet order size was $127.73US and average smartphone order size was $111.43. This data is from IBM.

ChannelAdvisor reports that retail giant Amazon saw an increase in sales over last year by 30.7% on Thursday, 24.7% on Friday, and 23.7% on Saturday. Google Shopping saw huge increases in their newly reformed Product Listing Ads (PLAs), which were well over 100% increases over last year.

ChannelAdvisor reported that Amazon same-store sales rose 30.7% Thursday, 34.7% Friday, and 23.7% Saturday compared with the year-ago dates. The company also said Google Shopping and Product Listing Ads (PLAs) rose 145%, 126%, and 111% on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, respectively.

Last year’s Cyber Monday sales reached somewhere in the neighbourhood of $1.47 billion (US) and comScore estimates put this year’s Cyber Monday sales at about $2 billion (US).

The United States’ National Retail Federation (NRF) monitors offline and online spending in the retail sector and reports on their findings. The NRF surveyed consumers to find that 41% shopped online during the holiday weekend, which adds up to about 59 million online shoppers. Average spend online was $177.67 (US). When asked which day they shopped online the breakdown is as follows: 26.5% on Thanksgiving Day (Thursday), 47.1% on Black Friday, 35.7% on Saturday, and 24.5% on Sunday. Over 50% of those surveyed said they will shop online on Cyber Monday.

SessionM reported the following interesting statistics about Black Friday shoppers:

54% of in store shoppers used their mobile devices during Black Friday for entertainment while waiting in the long lines.

41% used their smartphones to check prices and find the best deals.

Only 39% of Black Friday shoppers went to a store for one specific item.