A report late Monday night from IBM’s Digital Analytics Benchmark showed Cyber Monday sales up 18.8% year over year. Mobile traffic accounted for nearly 30% of all online traffic, 58% higher than last year, and mobile sales accounted for 15.6% of all online sales.
In keeping with the experience of Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday, tablets drove 9.8% of all online sales on Cyber Monday, more than 1.5 times more than the 5.7% driven by smartphones. Tablet orders averaged $128.30, compared with an average of $110.50 from smartphones.
Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) referrals converted sales at a 10% higher rate than Pinterest referrals, and the average order size for a Facebook-referred sale was $98.20 compared with $93.51 for Pinterest referrals.
For the five days from Thanksgiving Day through Monday, Adobe Digital Index reports that online sales totaled $7.4 billion, up 26% over a year ago and more than 10% of retailers’ total yearly sales. The following chart gives an hour-by-hour comparison of sales for Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Adobe Digital Index also estimates that about $150 million in sales during the past five days came from social media referrals, but total referrals were flat with last year, accounting for 2% of sales. Mobile devices did not approach their Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday share of total online sales, grabbing about 18% of all sales compared with about 22% on Thanksgiving and more than 25% on Black Friday.
The double-digit increase in the use of mobile devices for shopping is the big story for this year’s four-day Thanksgiving weekend. Yes, the base is small and the number does not really have anywhere to go but up. Still, the number of sales being driven by tablets is revelatory and shopper interest in tablets like the iPad from Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) and the Kindle Fire from Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) indicate that mobile shopping will only grow more and take on a larger role in consumer buying. Retailers had better be paying attention.
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