Once again, Cyber Monday has retained its title as the busiest day of the year for shopping online. According to Adobe’s latest figures, online sales on Cyber Monday alone totaled $3.45 billion, which shows a growth of 12.1% when compared with last year’s total.
The strong result helped to allay fears that a large increase in web sales over Thanksgiving weekend would hurt Cyber Monday. While this is generally good news for retailers, the rate of growth for Cyber Monday sales is still considerably lower than the growth rate for Black Friday (21.6%), and the $3.45 billion spent on Monday “just barely [edges] out” the $3.34 billion spent the Friday before. This shouldn’t come as much surprise, given both the growing ubiquity of online shopping and the ability of most shoppers to purchase goods either on their home computer or mobile phone.
According to Adobe, the mobile share of visits was 44% on Cyber Monday and 55% on Black Friday. Additionally, this past Black Friday was the first day ever to generate more than $1 billion-worth of sales from mobile devices. This demonstrates the growing importance of mobile phones for online browsing and shopping, which in turn creates pressure on retailers and other e-commerce platforms to ensure that their websites are optimized for mobile browsing.
Overall, this year’s Thanksgiving shopping extravaganza has proved to be a huge success, in terms of both online and physical sales. However, there are a few takeaways; not least, the increasing numbers of people who choose to shop on their mobile phone. Moreover, the number of social media mentions referring to Cyber Monday fell by 82% compared to last year. This could be because retailers are increasingly lengthening the discount window, with retailers like Target and Macy’s promising a full “Cyber Week”. While promotions like these might provide a short-term surge in spending, they may have unintended consequences in the future. If consumers no longer feel that they can get the best deal on products on Cyber Monday, they might choose to alter their spending habits, which in turn could mean that Cyber Monday will no longer be the boon it is to retailers today.