Online Holiday Shopping Sales Crush Last Year's

By 10 a.m., Cyber Monday sales were already up to $719 million, a 17 percent growth over last year, according to Adobe research.

The surge in sales was driven in part by lower prices early in the morning and increased mobile shopping. Having spent the weekend looking at visits to more than 4,500 American retailers’ websites, Adobe found similar statistics for Thanksgiving and Black Friday.

Both days saw nearly 25 percent growth from last year, with online sales totaling $1.3 billion and $2.4 billion, respectively, which is only slightly less than Adobe’s predictions from earlier this month. Since November 1, consumers have spent $32 billion online, 14 percent more than last year. $1.3 billion of those dollars were spent on Singles Day, the Chinese cybershopping holiday that’s gaining traction in the U.S.

In its earlier predictions, Adobe speculated that mobile shopping would account for nearly one-third of holiday revenue, but the number was actually higher, according to IBM, another company that spent the weekend tracking trends. Mobile devices dominated desktop for the first time this holiday weekend. At 52.1 percent, more than half of Thanksgiving’s online traffic came from smartphones and tablets. Black Friday mobile shopping also increased significantly from last year, jumping to 49.6 percent of all online traffic.

“Mobile has become the new Thanksgiving tradition as consumers find the best deals with their fingers as well as their feet,” says Jay Henderson, strategy program director at IBM. Additionally, IBM found that while people are more likely to browse with their smartphones – iOS, more so than Android – tablets ultimately account for more sales.

Looking at the impact of social media, both studies found that Facebook is the dominant platform. This is unsurprising, as more than half of Americans are Facebook users, but Pinterest came in second place with the biggest jump, driving 16 percent more sales than last year.