According to Adobe, 2017 will be the first year to break $100 billion in online sales in the U.S., an increase of 6% from the total of $94.4 billion for the holiday season in 2016. According to Adobe, consumers purchased $6.59 billion online during Cyber Monday, with purchases made on smartphones also breaking a record with $2 billion in sales.
According to Adobe, overall online traffic was up 11.9% for Cyber Monday. During the long weekend between Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday, mobile was a big contributor. In fact, 47.4% of visits were from mobile devices (39.9% from smartphones, with the rest coming from tablets) … representing 33% of revenues.
During the long weekend, $2 billion in sales were made via smartphones, which represented more than a 40% year-over-year increase, states Adobe. Meanwhile, Salesforce found that mobile accounted for 42% of order share and 60% of traffic on Black Friday, up from 34% and 52% in 2016, respectively. This is the first time that mobile volumes have exceeded those online. These radical changes in buying behavior are bellwether indicators for not only retail, but for other industries as well.
Increasing Impact of Mobile
“Shopping and buying on smartphones is becoming the new norm and can be attributed to continued optimizations in the retail experience on mobile devices and platforms,” said Mickey Mericle, vice president, Marketing and Customer Insights at Adobe. “Consumers are also becoming more savvy and efficient online shoppers. People increasingly know where to find the best deals and what they want to purchase, which results in less price matching behavior typically done on desktops. Millennials were likely another reason for the dramatic growth in mobile, with 75% expecting to shop via their smartphone.”
But it wasn’t just traffic that increased during this period. There were increases of 26% in time spent on sites alongside a huge decrease in bounce rate of nearly 15% over the two day period, according to SimilarWeb. This indicates an improved customer experience, where a greater percentage of visits result in sales.
Personalization also becomes a big trend for retailers, according to Salesforce. Their 2017 research found that while just 5% of shoppers clicked or tapped on a personalized product recommendation, they accounted for 28% of all revenue — making them some of the most profitable customers for retailers.
