Online Holiday Spending Already A Record-Breaker

Christmas is just around the corner, and online holiday shoppers have been busier and spending more than ever, according to a new report.

Online sales reached $80.3 billion from Nov. 1 to Dec. 6, according to data from Adobe Analytics – an increase of 18.6 percent from last year. It’s the largest online shopping period ever, beating out last year’s total of $67.7 billion.

Some of the top states by basket size were Alaska, California, New York and Wyoming. With two weeks to go, Adobe is forecasting the full season, which runs from Nov. 1 to Dec. 31, to reach at least $124.1 billion.

Shoppers didn’t just use their computers to purchase items online. Almost three out of every five visits to retail sites came from a mobile device, and mobile transactions increased by 54.8 percent to $23.7 billion. Also, social media platforms impacted sales in a minimal way, with only 1.5 percent using them to shop.

Shoppers also employed the hybrid method of shopping online and picking up the merchandise from a store, a practice that jumped 46 percent from the previous year. Additionally, of all U.S. online shoppers included in the data, one fifth of them planned to do more than 75 percent of their holiday shopping at big online stores like Amazon.

Online shopping continues to break new records, and this year’s Cyber Monday was no exception. According to Adobe’s data, it was the single biggest shopping day of all time, and reached $7.9 billion, a jump of 19.3 percent from the previous year. Amazon shared similar news, saying Cyber Monday was also its biggest shopping day ever.

“Black Friday and Cyber Monday continue to break records on Amazon year over year, which tells us that customers love shopping for deals to kick off the holiday shopping season,” said Jeff Wilke, CEO of the worldwide consumer division at Amazon. “With curated gift guides, convenient shopping experiences, incredible product selection and free shipping with no minimum purchase amount, Amazon offers customers tremendous value, sure to deliver smiles all season long.”