Holiday E-Commerce Up Only 12%

Holiday online spending, based on desktop sales has risen only 12% for the last two months of the year, according to comScore. The figure seems very modest. However, it does not include mobile, which by most measures is exploding

comScore reported:

U.S. desktop retail e-commerce spending for the first 25 days of the November–December 2016 holiday season. For the holiday season-to-date, $24.52 billion has been spent online, marking a 12-percent increase versus the corresponding days last year.

Thanksgiving Day saw a 17-percent gain to $1.29 billion in spending to surpass the billion dollar threshold for the third consecutive year and marking the ninth day of the 2016 season to reach that level. Black Friday (November 25) followed with an even stronger spending day with $1.97 billion in desktop online sales, just under the $2 billion milestone and up 19 percent from Black Friday 2015.

Adobe’s related research shows the strength of mobile reporting

its 2016 online shopping data for Black Friday and Thanksgiving Day. More than $5 billion ($5.27 billion) was spent online by the end of Black Friday, a 17.7 percent increase year-over-year (YoY). Black Friday set a new record by surpassing the three-billion-dollar mark for the first time at $3.34 billion (21.6 percent growth YoY) while Thanksgiving accounted for the remaining $1.93 billion. Black Friday became the first day in retail history to drive over one billion dollars in mobile revenue at $1.2 billion, a 33 percent growth YoY.

The five best selling toys were Lego Creator Sets, electric scooters from Razor, Nerf Guns, DJI Phantom Drones and Barbie Dreamhouse. The five top selling electronic products on Black Friday were Apple iPads, Samsung 4k TVs, Apple MacBook Air, LG TVs and Microsoft Xbox. Mobile is driving the majority of visits to retail websites on Black Friday at 55 percent (45 percent coming from smartphones, 10 percent from tablets), while accounting for 36 percent of sales (25 percent smartphones, 11 percent tablets). Large retailers* have seen twice the growth in online sales compared to small retailers since the beginning of the season. Retailers that have invested in mobile, email and social have seen 30 percent more sales on average and 25 percent higher average order values.

The lack of mobile information makes the value of the comScore data limited

comScore added more data about desktop:

Other highlights from the holiday weekend include:

• Apparel & Accessories ranked as the top product category on Black Friday with nearly $500 million in desktop sales, while Toys & Hobbies saw the highest rate of growth from last year.

• 116 million people visited online retail sites on Black Friday, with 52 million coming via desktop and 90 million via mobile (and 26 million on both).

• Households making $100,000+ in annual income accounted for 42 percent of buyers and 45 percent of desktop spending on Black Friday.

• More than 70 percent of desktop e-commerce dollars for the season-to-date have come through transactions using free shipping.

• There have been ten billion-dollar spending days on desktop through Black Friday this year, while last year at this point in the season only Thanksgiving and Black Friday had reached tha