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Black Friday by the numbers: Another year of e-commerce records

Data from Adobe, Monetate, Rakuten Marketing, Salesforce and Shopify shines a light on Thanksgiving and Black Friday weekend sales activity.

Amy Gesenhues on November 27, 2017 at 3:59 pm

Across the board, the numbers now in from several reports point to a strong online kick-off to the holiday shopping season.

After predicting holiday e-commerce revenue will reach a record-breaking $100.7 billion by year’s end, Adobe reports Black Friday online retail sales reached $5.03 billion — up 16.9 percent over last year.

“Adobe predicted $5 billion in spend for Black Friday. This holiday season to date (November 1-24) shows $38.3 billion in online shopping revenue, 17.8 percent growth year-over-year. This is just over Adobe’s prediction by $0.7 billion,” says Adobe in a news release announcing its holiday weekend findings.

Tracking 80 percent of online transactions of the largest 100 US online retailers, Adobe says $7.50 of every $10 spent online goes through its system.

On Black Friday, Adobe says that 54.3 percent of retail website visits and 36.9 percent of revenue happened on a mobile device, with conversion rates for tablets up 13 percent year over year, and smartphones up 16.5 percent year over year.

The average order value (AOV) per Adobe’s data was $135. Monetate, a personalization software for brands, saw a slightly higher AOV during Black Friday at $142.86. Tracking 200 million consumer digital touch points across desktops, mobile phones and tablets over Thanksgiving and Black Friday, Monetate reports AOVs for desktop were the highest of any channel at $173.92.

Looking at mobile, Monetate says that it saw Thanksgiving Day mobile page views up 30 percent over last year.

Tracking online behavior for 350 million shoppers, Salesforce says mobile phones accounted for 60 percent of traffic to retail sites, up from 53 percent last year.

“Shoppers aren’t just browsing on phones,” says Salesforce in a blog post covering Black Friday’s results, “Forty-two percent of Black Friday orders were placed from a phone.”

According to Salesforce, Black Friday saw a 24 percent increase in digital commerce. The combined digital commerce for Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday represented a 26 percent growth rate — nearly double the 15 percent growth that happened during Q3 of this year.

Salesforce’s Flash Report for Digital Commerce during Black Friday

Shopify, an e-commerce platform, says the more than 500,000 merchants that use its software cumulatively experienced their highest Black Friday sales to date.

“More than $1,000,000 in sales went through the platform per minute at the peak, beating last year’s high of $555,716,” said Shopify in a news announcement covering Black Friday sales numbers.

Shopify says 66 percent of orders it tracked were made on a mobile device — up from the 58 percent of mobile orders it saw in 2016.

Rakuten Marketing’s Thanksgiving and Black Friday online retail sales findings followed suit with the other firms, showing growth across the board. The digital marketing and analytics platform says Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday saw a combined 23 percent year-over-year growth in online revenue.

According to Rakuten, mobile revenue saw a 43 percent growth rate for the full Thanksgiving week (Sunday-Friday), with mobile purchases up 34 percent, and AOV up seven percent. Rakuten says the peak time for revenue and purchase activity during the Thanksgiving-Black Friday shopping period happened at 2:00 p.m. ET on Black Friday.

The firm also looked at click-through rates and ad engagement, finding that both activities surged during the week prior to the holiday, with click-through rates up 154 percent and ad engagement up 111 percent.

“Consumers were researching products for their holiday shopping gift list in advance of the peak shopping days,” says Rakuten. The company’s CEO, Tony Zito, expects the upward growth in holiday online sales to continue through Cyber Monday.

Adobe is predicting Cyber Monday to be the largest online shopping day in history, expected to bring in $6.6 billion sales that will represent 16.5 percent year-over-year growth.

About The Author

Amy Gesenhues

Amy Gesenhues is Third Door Media's General Assignment Reporter, covering the latest news and updates for Marketing Land and Search Engine Land. From 2009 to 2012, she was an award-winning syndicated columnist for a number of daily newspapers from New York to Texas. With more than ten years of marketing management experience, she has contributed to a variety of traditional and online publications, including MarketingProfs.com, SoftwareCEO.com, and Sales and Marketing Management Magazine. Read more of Amy's articles.