Consumers made more than $2 billion worth of purchases in the mobile eCommerce channel between Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Adobe reports that mobile devices accounted for nearly half of online shopping visits while comScore estimates that mobile eCommerce spending increased 53 percent from last year on Cyber Monday.
If the consumer shopping trends observed from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday continue, merchants can expect to generate a lot of revenue in the mobile channel this holiday season. According to estimates from Adobe’s Digital Index, mobile shopping visits exceeded desktop site visits on Thanksgiving Day. Consumers spent $1.73 billion online on Thanksgiving according to these estimates, of which $639 million, or 37 percent, were purchases made from mobile devices. Approximately 43 percent of eCommerce shopping visits occurred on a smartphone while 14 percent were attributed to tablets. Smartphones represented 22 percent of the eCommerce shopping volume on Thanksgiving while tablets comprised 15 percent.
Consumers continued to favor mobile devices more this year on Black Friday as well, although mobile did not generate quite as much in sales. Adobe estimates that 53 percent of online shopping visits came from mobile devices on Black Friday (40 percent smartphones and 13 percent tablets) compared to 57 percent on Thanksgiving. While mobile commerce represented 37 percent of Thanksgiving online sales Adobe estimates that mobile eCommerce totaled $583 million on Black Friday, about 21 percent of the online total. Android operating system smartphones comprised one-third of all smartphone online sales for the day.
On Cyber Monday mobile devices represented a smaller share of shopping traffic but a higher share of the online purchase volume relative to Black Friday. Adobe estimates that PCs represented just over half of total shopping visits while 38 percent of visits came from smartphones and 11 percent came from tablets. Mobile devices, however, drove 28 percent of the more than $3 billion in estimated online sales for Cyber Monday. According to Adobe, sales on mobile devices totaled $514 million, 61 percent of which came from smartphones. Apple iOS devices represented nearly two-thirds of all smartphone mobile eCommerce purchases and 85 percent of all tablet-based purchases on Cyber Monday.
Estimates for total online retail spending from comScore are slightly higher than Adobe’s ($3.12 billion versus $2.98 billion), but find that about 27 percent of online sales on Cyber Monday came from mobile devices. Preliminary estimates from comScore indicate that mobile eCommerce on Cyber Monday grew more than 50 percent from last year to $838 million, considerably higher Adobe’s estimate of $514 million.
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