Holiday Season Online Spending Surpasses $22.7 Billion

U.S. consumers' online spending via desktops rose 32% to $1.01 billion this Thanksgiving Day. Black Friday followed with $1.51 billion in sales, up 26% compared with the same day in 2013, per comScore.     

Overall, consumers used desktops to spend $22.7 billion online from the start of the holidays to date, up 15% compared with the same days last year. Gian Fulgoni, comScore chairman, believes more consumers want to stay home on Thanksgiving Day to enjoy family and friends, forgoing crowded stores, yet capitalizing on the deals.

Retail technology provider Monetate, tracking nearly 40 million Web site visits on Black Friday, reveals that traditional desktop and laptop traffic fell 10%, while tablets rose 7.5%, putting the data in line with comScore. Tablet traffic accounted for 21.52% of all online traffic, up 6.53% year-over-year (YoY). Smartphone commerce transactions rose 38.30%. Smartphone traffic accounted for 20.97% of all online traffic, up 37.06% compared with a year ago. 

Smartphones and tablets accounted for 42.49% of all online traffic -- up 20.77% YoY. But revenue inched up and smartphone sales fell 34.40%, according to Monetate. Revenue via desktops rose 16.5%, and tablets, 12.20%.

While ecommerce traffic inched up slightly by 0.9% YoY, average order values rose 2.8% to $163.49, compared with the year-ago period, with conversion rates rising 4.68%.

This year, consumers added more merchandise to online shopping carts -- about 0.2% -- and cart abandonment rates fell 2.1%. Revenue per session rose 6% and revenue per converting session rose 2.60% as consumers clicked their way through 24.7% more page views, compared with the same time period a year ago. Mobile phone and tablet sales accounted for 26.71% of all online sales, up 12.99% YoY.

Black Friday browsing turned into Cyber Saturday buying. The average order value of all purchases rose 4.7% YoY to $150.77, while revenue per ecommerce session rose 14.8% YoY, and conversion rates rose 10.3% YoY, per Monetate.

The ChannelAdvisor Same Store Sales report for Cyber Saturday saw total online sales continue to outpace projections, coming in at 27%. Amazon dominated with 45.93% market share. eBay declined from Black Friday's 26.9% to 14.87%, and mobile held steady at 47%.

Search rose from 18.1% market share on Black Friday to 23.9% on Cyber Saturday, and Google Shopping and product listing ads bounced back from a flat Black Friday to 19.7% growth, per ChannelAdvisor. Thanksgiving held the lead for mobile at 49%, compared with 47% for Cyber Saturday.

Santa shopping image via Shutterstock.com

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