Online Thanksgiving Shopping Up 18 Percent YoY

Thanksgiving was a time to buy for a lot of Americans, with online shoppers spending $2.9 billion on the holiday alone.

According to a news report in Recode, citing Adobe Analytics – the research firm that tracks 80 percent of online transactions from 100 of the leading retailers in the U.S. – online spending on Thanksgiving was up 18 percent compared to last year. What’s more, 46 percent of visits to online retailers came from users on mobile devices, accounting for 29 percent of sales on the holiday – that’s up from 27 percent in 2016.

Still, the report noted that conversion rates from smartphones are lower than when shopping on a tablet or regular computer, even if they did make some inroads this Black Friday weekend. Many people visited eCommerce mobile sites to check for store hours or locations without planning to make a purchase. Retailers are also to blame for the low conversion rates, as some still make it difficult to enter credit card information to complete purchases. Shopping apps that make it easy to buy with mobile devices, such as Amazon, will benefit from a growth in mobile commerce, noted Recode.

According to a Reuters news report, strong sales during the deeply discounted sales weekend are a good early indicator that spending is on track to rise this year. According to Adobe Analytics, consumers spent $5.03 billion on the internet by the end of Black Friday, up 17 percent year over year.

Meanwhile, digital media company GlobalData told CNBC that Black Friday sales saw the biggest boost in the past six years, based on early numbers. “I think department stores had a reasonable time of it, better than last year,” said Neil Saunders, GlobalData’s retail managing director.

Kohl’s chief executive Kevin Mansell told CNBC it saw “record-breaking” sales, both online and in stores. The retailer’s website had more than 16 million visitors during Black Friday, breaking records in both sales and traffic. Kohl’s also fulfilled about 40 percent more orders that were purchased online and picked up in the store.