HISTORIC CYBER MONDAY
Online sales break record to tune of $6.59B
Shoppers took to their mobile phones, computers and tablets yesterday to find bargains and again put “Cyber Monday” on target for being the biggest U.S. online shopping day ever. Yesterday’s e-commerce sales were projected to hit a new record, with the largest online sales day in history with $6.59 billion by the end of the day, a 16.8 percent year-over-year increase as of 10 p.m., reported Adobe Analytics, the research arm of software maker Adobe that measures 80 percent of online transactions for the 100 largest U.S. e-tailers. Consumers returning to work after Thanksgiving weekend were “poised to be hitting the buy button all day,” according to Tamara Gaffney, director of Adobe’s strategic insights engagement group. “Cyber Monday is expected to make history again as the biggest U.S. online shopping day of all time, driving a billion dollars more than last year,” Gaffney said. “A lot more of this will be happening on smartphones ... where smoother buying experiences through auto-fill capabilities are helping drive the growth.” The National Retail Federation coined “Cyber Monday” in 2005 after noticing online sales spiked the Monday after Thanksgiving.
Cyber Monday online sales reached $840 million by 10 a.m. yesterday, a 16.9 percent jump from 2016, with web traffic up 12 percent. Mobile use set a record, with smartphone traffic rising 21 percent, and revenue from smartphones up 41 percent. Web traffic from mobile devices is expected to top desktop computers for the first time this year, Adobe said.
The Echo Dot was the top-selling electronic item on Amazon.com, followed by the Fire TV. Board games, Fingerlings and Legos were bestsellers in Amazon’s toy section.
On eBay, one $745 Apple MacBook Air was sold every five seconds, the company said. J.C. Penney said top-selling items on its website were towels, $25 diamond stud earrings and a Liz Claiborne bag with a built-in phone charger.
Target and Toys R Us offered 15 percent off most items. Walmart tripled the amount of items available on its site from last year and said it would bring back Black Friday discounts that were popular with shoppers.
But Amazon is expected to be the big winner this holiday season, with Bain & Co. expecting the online retailer to capture 50 percent of all online sales growth this year. Amazon said it broke sales records last weekend and was on pace to do so yesterday, with 3 million toys sold halfway through Cyber Monday.
Amazon shares closed at $1,195.83 yesterday, up $9.83 or 0.8 percent, while Walmart shares remained flat at $96.62.
Thanksgiving and Black Friday, when shoppers spent $7.9 billion and bought more on their mobile devices than last year, also generated record online sales.