Black Friday Starts Early Morning With $643 Million In Online Spend

Black Friday Starts Early Morning With $643 Million In Online Spend

by  @lauriesullivan, November 23, 2018

Black Friday, the day consumers head to the stores, started with consumers spending $643 million online spend as of 10 a.m. ET, up 27.8% year-over-year (YoY).

Adobe forecasts that online spend will reach more than $6.4 billion on Black Friday, and will either match or surpass last year’s Cyber Monday revenue of $6.6 billion. The company released Black Friday shopping numbers, along with Thanksgiving Day sales, early Friday morning.

Black Friday Starts Early Morning With $643 Million In Online Spend | DeviceDaily.com

Direct site traffic ranks highest for driving sales at 27.2% share of sales, up 0.2% year-over-year (YoY); followed by paid search at 24.0%, up 6%; organic search at 20.9%, down 5.7% YoY; and email at 20.3%, up 2.8%.

The holiday data is based on the analysis of more than 1 trillion visits to retail sites and 55 million stock-keeping units, better known as SKUs. Adobe Analytics measures transactions from 80 of the top 100 U.S. online retailers.

Thanksgiving Day sales rose 28% to $3.7 billion in online spend, making Thanksgiving the fastest-growing retail day in online shopping history to date. Thanksgiving marked the first day to see $1 billion in sales coming from smartphones.

Last year, Cyber Monday surpassed $1 billion in smartphone sales. Consumers also spent more, with an average order value of 8% versus Thanksgiving Day last year. 

Interestingly, consumers nearly doubled their click-and-collect, buy online and pick-up in stores, orders from Wednesday to Thursday, with these types of orders up 91% from one day compared with the prior day.

Retailers continue to see conversions from all devices, but consumers feeling comfortable with smartphones have turned clicks into purchases 2.0% of the time, up 7.6% YoY. Desktops clicks converted at a rate of 4.3%, up 2.6% YoY; and tablets at 4.3%, up 5.4% YoY.

It turns out 60% of shoppers plan to shop online on Black Friday, whereas 43% plan to shop at a physical store. Nearly two-thirds of online shoppers reported they plan to at least browse in a physical store prior to purchasing online. The majority of Black Friday spending will be on gifts for others, according to an Adobe survey of 1,024 U.S. shoppers between November 9 and November 13. 

MediaPost.com: Search Marketing Daily

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