Although there was no shortage of in-store mayhem this Black Friday, shoppers are increasingly opting to take advantage of the major discounts online and mobile commerce.
Online sales broke new records this year, with mobile traffic outpacing PC traffic for the first time ever leading up to Black Friday. By analysing customer transaction data, browsing on smartphones and tablets accounted for 52.1% of all online traffic, and online sales that day were up 14.3% compared to 2013.
“Mobile has become the new Thanksgiving tradition as consumers find the best deals with their fingers as well as their feet,” Jay Henderson, Director of IBM Smarter Commerce said in a statement. “We saw retailers harness the power of data to engage shoppers, identifying the unique preferences of their customers while quickly capitalizing on online, mobile or in-store trends as they emerged.”
Thursday’s mobile milestone fueled record online purchases on Black Friday, which saw a 9.5% year-over-year increase in overall online sales. Mobile sales accounted for 27.9% of these sales, up 28.2% over 2013. The data acquired from PayPal similarly reflected mobile growth, with a 43% global increase in the number of customers shopping through PayPal mobile on Thanksgiving 2014 compared to Thanksgiving 2013. Fashion was the top mobile shopping category, driving almost twice as much PayPal global mobile payment volume as the next category, electronics.
Black Friday shopping is also increasingly pushing back into Thanksgiving Day. Online sales that day increased 14.3% over 2013. Black Friday sales were 63.5% higher than Thanksgiving Day this year, a decrease from 2013 when they were 70% higher than Thanksgiving Day.
However, although mobile commerce was huge for online shoppers this year, desktop is not “dead” yet. When consumers did choose to use their PC or desktop, they spent more with an average order value of $135.33 compared to $116.02 for mobile shoppers, a difference of 16.6% of overall purchasing.