This holiday shopping season proved to be another record breaking period for online sales and even brought good news to the recently distressed brick-and-mortar retail industry. From November 1st through Christmas Eve, online shopping saw a whopping 18.1% increase in sales over last year. And despite a rough year for brick-and-mortar retail, holiday sales exceeded expectations as physical location retailers saw a 4.9% increase in sales, making it the largest increase since 2011.
Thanksgiving
While Black Friday has traditionally been considered the start of the holiday shopping season, this year the season kicked off on Thanksgiving day with record-breaking numbers. Thanksgiving generated $2.87 billion in online sales, an 18.3% increase over last year.
Black Friday
Over the past few years, Black Friday has seen a significant increase in online sales. This year was no exception with over $5.03 billion in online sales generated in on that day alone. Mobile continues to dominate, making up 36.9% of sales - a 29% increase over last year.
And while Amazon has not disclosed their sales numbers, they have hinted at another record-setting holiday sales season this year. A research analytics firm estimates that 27.2% of Black Friday’s online sales came from Amazon.
Cyber Monday
Known as the largest online shopping day of the year, this year’s Cyber Monday did not disappoint. Cyber Monday generated a record $6.59 billion online, a 16.8% increase over last year, making it the largest online shopping day in eCommerce history.
According to estimates, Amazon sales accounted for 30.1% of all online sales on Cyber Monday and 28.4% of all online sales during Cyber Week.
It appears that both online and offline shopping are off to a good start going into 2018. And as this year’s holiday eCommerce sales numbers prove, user-friendly websites (optimized for mobile consumers on-the-go) are the key to online success.