Social, Mobile Soar in Back-to-School Finale

As merchants sift through their back-to-school receipts, it looks like the season's two best-sellers were social and mobile sales. IBM's Benchmark reports that social sales, or online sales that happen as a result of a referral from a social media site, accounted for 1.6% of July sales, a jump of 25% from the prior year, and 2.2% of all August sales, a 69.7% increase. M-commerce increased by 15.7% in July, and 15.4% in August. Overall, online sales gained 11% in July, then slowed to a 3.9% advance in August.