Black Friday Online Sales Up a Record 43%

A record $7.40 billion was spent online by the end of Black Friday, the second largest online sales day ever (last year’s Cyber Monday reached $7.9 billion in sales),  according to Adobe Analytics. This $7.40 billion total represented a 43 percent year-over-year increase. What's more, the average order value set a new record for Black Friday (at $168), up 5.9 percent year-over-year. Other holiday findings from Adobe include the following:

• Consumers flocked to brick-and-mortar stores to pick up goods. Click-and-collect orders grew 43.2 percent year-over year, a sign that retailers are successfully bridging online and offline retail operations. 
• Black Friday was the biggest day ever for mobile shopping, with $2.9 billion in sales coming from smartphones. Thirty-nine percent of all e-commerce sales were made on a smartphone, a 21 percent increase over 2018.
• Smaller retailers saw success as well, with revenue nearly quadrupling compared to an average day last month, and a 140 percent boost in sales from Thanksgiving to Black Friday. While small retailers were more effective than large retailers at getting consumers to add products to their carts (13 percent better on mobile and 51 percent better on desktop), large retailers were 60 percent better at getting consumers to complete a purchase on desktop.
• Cyber Monday is forecast to be the largest online shopping day in U.S. history, generating $9.4 billion in sales, up 18.9 percent year-over-year.

“Black Friday broke mobile shopping records, with $2.9 billion spent through smartphones alone," said Taylor Schreiner, principal analyst and head of Adobe Digital Insights. "Even when shoppers went to stores, they were now buying nearly 41 percent more online before going to the store to pick up."

Total Retail's Take: So, does this mean we will no longer see images of people being trampled at the mall on Black Friday as they race to grab that year's hot holiday item? Sort of. Foot traffic at malls and stores across the U.S. this past holiday weekend wasn't as strong as last year, ShopperTrak (a division of Sensormatic Solutions) reported. The number of shoppers visiting physical stores on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday combined declined 3 percent compared to last year. However, while there was a 6.2 percent decline in traffic on Black Friday this year vs. 2018, there was a 2.3 percent increase in traffic on Thanksgiving Day. Additionally, there was a small shift of in-store traffic away from the beginning of the week and into both Thanksgiving and Black Friday, dispelling the idea that in-store traffic is moving away from the holiday and further into November. 

“Black Friday continues to remain the busiest shopping day of the year by a long shot,” said Brian Field, senior director of global retail consulting, ShopperTrak. “Shopping in physical stores during the holidays continues to be an exciting annual event for consumers. With eight of the 10 predicted busiest shopping days still to come, including Super Saturday, which will fall on Dec. 21 this year, retailers are in for a successful holiday season.”