Sunday, November 28, 2010

Black Friday Sales Figures Soar for Online Retailers


Initial numbers for Black Friday sales are in, and things are looking pretty rosy for Internet retailers.

Americans typically think of Black Friday as the biggest day of the year for brick-and-mortar stores, but another segment of the retail industry is seeing phenomenal year-over-year growth, even as the recession lingers on.

Online retailers saw an overall 15.9% sales growth between Black Friday 2009 and Black Friday 2010. The price of the average order also rose 12.1% from around $170 per order to $190.80.

This data, which comes from Coremetrics, also shows that consumers, though they’re spending more online, are spending smarter. When we make a purchase, we’re viewing fewer items per site, looking at fewer pages and doing fewer on-site searches, suggesting that we’ve done our research ahead of time and know what we want when we decide to make a purchase.

With that in mind, it’s likely that a greater online spend might translate to a lower overall spend this holiday season, as bargain hunters glean the best deals from the web and forgo traditional, in-store shopping.

Retailers are also seeing more mobile shoppers logging in from their phones. Around 5.6% of Black Friday 2010 traffic came from mobile devices — a 26.7 year-over-year increase.

These results don’t surprise us much. Online shopping has long been on the rise; in fact, in a poll we’re running right now, the majority of respondents are already saying they’ll do all or most of their holiday shopping online.

Jolie O'Dell for Mashable

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