• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, November 27, 2017

Online retail sales were up 17.6% Thanksgiving morning over the same time last year, Adobe Inc reports, maintaining a trend of holiday e-commerce sales soaring in November. And, record numbers of consumers were shopping Thursday morning on their smartphones.

As of 10 a.m. Eastern time, consumers had spent $360 million online. The 17.6% early year-over-year sales increase was in line with the 17.9% growth in online retail sales from Nov. 1 to Nov. 22 compared to the comparable period last year, the report says.

Early Thanksgiving shoppers pulled out their smartphones to shop, and mobile phones alone accounted for a record 44.2% of early Thanksgiving Day traffic to retail websites, up 16% over last year, according to Adobe. The average ticket for Thursday’s orders was $137, 0.8%, higher than the pre-Thanksgiving. Conversion rate also was up across all devices.

Mickey Mericle, vice president, marketing and insights at Adobe, notes that “Thanksgiving is shaping up to be a record-breaking shopping day. Conversion rates across the board are seeing double-digit growth, and we’ll see that continue throughout the week as we expect Black Friday and Cyber Monday to pull in the most spend.”

Source report here