Black Friday Online Sales Reached Record $7.4B
Black Friday was the biggest ever for online sales, as fewer people hit the stores and shoppers rang up $7.4 billion in transactions from their phones, computers and tablets.
That’s close to the $7.9 billion haul of last year’s Cyber Monday, which holds the one-day record for online sales, according to Adobe Analytics. Adobe measures sales at 80 of the top 100 U.S. online retailers.
Smartphone sales were up 21% over last year and those who were not buying were, as a start, browsing, with whopping 61% of all online traffic to retailers coming from smartphones, up 15.8% since last year.
Shoppers have been looking for “Frozen 2” toys in particular. Other top purchases included sports video games and Apple laptops.
People are also shopping for more expensive items. Adobe noted that Average Order Value was $168, a new record level yesterday for Black Friday, up 5.9% on a year ago.
Salesforce, meanwhile, said that its data revealed $7.2 billion in sales.
Popular products included toys on the themes of Frozen 2, L.O.L Surprise, and Paw Patrol. Best selling video games included FIFA 20, Madden 20, and Nintendo Switch. And top electronics, meanwhile, included Apple Laptops, Airpods, and Samsung TVs.
Traffic at stores fell 2.1% on Black Friday from a year ago, according to preliminary figures from RetailNext, which tracks in-store activity at tens of thousands of locations, including specialty apparel retailers, big-box stores and mall-based stores. The drop in traffic helped lead to a 1.6% dip in sales.
However, many people buy things online, only to head to the store to pick them up. Such sales surged 43.2% on Black Friday from a year ago, according to Adobe.
Adobe expects online sales to jump to another record this Cyber Monday with an estimated total of $9.4 billion. Much of the shopping is happening on people’s phones, which accounted for 39% of all online sales Friday and 61% of online traffic.