Forget The Mall, Online Sales Skyrocket

(RTTNews) - This year's holiday shopping season has got off to a strong start. Online shoppers spent $1.52 billion on Thanksgiving Day, with smartphones accounting for 46 percent of all traffic to U.S. retail websites, according to Adobe Analytics data.

The $1.52 billion in online spend by Thanksgiving evening represents 16.8 percent growth from last year, according to the data. The average order value or AOV rose 3.2 percent to $132.

The data showed that consumers are buying more on their smartphones this year compared with 2016. In fact, smartphones account for just under half of all e-commerce traffic this year.

A record 46 percent of all traffic to retail sites this year came from smartphones, representing a gain of 15.2 percent over the same day last year. Meanwhile, the share of traffic from desktops and tablets have fallen from the prior year.

The four-day weekend,including Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday and Cyber Monday, is one of the biggest shopping weeks of the year. For years, Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, remained one of the busiest shopping days of the year, even though it is losing its preference these days with more and more online shopping.

Overall, Adobe estimates that consumers spent $30.39 billion online between November 1 and November 22 this year, up 17.9 percent from last year. All the twenty two days saw an average of $1 billion in online spend by consumers.

Through this year's holiday shopping period so far from November 1 to November 22, consumers have spent 69 percent of their online dollars on their desktop, 21 percent on their smartphone and 10 percent on their tablet, according to Adobe.

In early November, Adobe released its online shopping predictions for the upcoming holiday season. Adobe said it expects online sales for this year's holiday season will be $107.4 billion, representing an increase of 13.8 percent.

Adobe expects Cyber Monday to become the largest online shopping day in history, generating $6.6 billion in sales and representing 16.5 percent growth compared to last year. The company has projected sales on Thanksgiving Day to increase 15 percent year-over-year to $2.8 billion.