Black Friday sales hit a new high, though it fell short of predictions. According to analytics from Adobe, consumers spent $7.4 billion buying goods online via computers, tablets, and smartphones. The figures are an increase on the $1.2 billion made on Black Friday 2018, but they actually fell short of Adobe’s prediction, which was $7.5 billion.
Salesforce, meanwhile, said that its checks reveal $7.2 billion for Black Friday sales, which is further off the forecast.
Popular products include toys on the themes of Frozen 2, L.O.L Surprise, and Paw Patrol. Best selling video games include FIFA 20, Madden 20, and Nintendo Switch. And top electronics, meanwhile, include Apple Laptops, Airpods, and Samsung TVs.
“With Christmas now rapidly approaching, consumers increasingly jumped on their phones rather than standing in line,” said Taylor Schreiner, Principal Analyst & Head of Adobe Digital Insights.
“Even when shoppers went to stores, they were now buying nearly 41% more online before going to the store to pick up. As such, mobile represents a growing opportunity for smaller businesses to extend the support they see from consumers buying locally in-store on Small Business Saturday to the rest of the holiday season. Small Business Saturday will accelerate sales for those retailers who can offer unique products or services that the retail giants can’t provide.”
Adobe Analytics tracks sales in real-time for 80 of the top 100 US retailers, covering 55 million stock keeping units (or SKUs) and some 1 trillion transactions during the holiday sales period.
Smartphone sales were up by 21% from last year. Those who were not buying were window shopping, with 61% of all online traffic to retailers coming from smartphones, an increment of 15.8% since last year.
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The Bigger Sites Did Better on Black Friday Sales
E-commerce “giants” with over $1 billion in sales annually did better than smaller sites for this year’s Black Friday sales. They had more smartphone sales, and 66% conversions on browsers on smartphones, Adobe said. They have overall also seen a 62% boost in sales this season, versus 27% for smaller retailers.
The bigger sites have a wider selection of goods and can afford to take hits with deep discounts on some items, in order to lure users in to add other items to their shopping carts that are not as deeply discounted. Or, bigger online retailers can simply afford to give bigger markdowns.
The bigger stores often have more flexible delivery options. Adobe noted that those using click-and-collect orders, or buy online, pick up in-store / curbside grew by 43 percent. These are probably the reason for the growth in their sales.
The story is not all rosy for big retailers, as some are seeing very mixed results.
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