Last week, my dental hygienist told me she was taking Monday off “for Cyber Monday.” Not Black Friday, but Cyber Monday. The irony of taking off the day that started strictly as a workplace shopping experience is rich, but her choice turns out to have been an early indicator of a broader trend. Consumers didn’t flock to offline deals on Black Friday, and sales were lackluster this year; meanwhile, Cyber Monday produced another e-commerce sales record.
Online sales topped $3 billion on Cyber Monday, according to Adobe. The company says 200 million visits to 4,500 retail websites generated $3.07 billion, an increase of 16 percent from a year ago. That makes it the biggest day of online sales in US history, says Adobe.
More than a quarter of those sales (26 percent) came from mobile devices, generating $799 million in sales. Apple iOS devices drove $575 million of mobile sales, while Android devices drove $219 million in mobile sales.
These numbers are in line with what ChannelAdvisor and Custora also saw.
ChannelAdvisor reported Cyber Monday sales jumped up 18 percent year over year on a same-store-sales basis, with smartphones driving 43 percent of traffic and 24 percent of sales with an average conversion rate of 3.04 percent. Custora says e-commerce revenue rose 16.2 percent from a year ago, and phones and tablets combined drove 26.9 percent of Cyber Monday sales.
ChannelAdvisor found tablets drove 12 percent of Cyber Monday traffic and 11 percent of sales at an average conversion rate of 5.41 percent. Desktops generated 65 percent of orders, with a strong conversion rate of 7.91 percent.
Adobe says that Cyber Monday’s strong sales volume was driven in part by deeper-than-expected discounts that averaged 21.5 percent. HookLogic found the average order value among advertisers on its platform hit $134, just below the $137 AOV seen on Black Friday. Carts had fewer items on Cyber Monday, on average, however, pointing to consumers purchasing higher-ticket items on Cyber Monday than on Black Friday.
A couple of other interesting points from the Adobe data: Display ads drove 57 percent more sales compared to Cyber Monday last year. Social’s share of sales increased 33 percent year over year, with a big after-work spike at 6:00 p.m.
Looking at time-of day trends holistically, ChannelAdvisor says the traffic surge on Cyber Monday started between 5:00 and 6:00 a.m. ET and continued upward until peaking between 2:00 and 3:00 p.m. After leveling off throughout the afternoon, traffic began climbing again at 6:00 p.m. until 11:00 p.m. ET.
On a same-store-sales basis, ChannelAdvisor says, Amazon saw Cyber Monday sales increase by 21.1 percent from a year ago, above the 20.8-percent growth it experienced on Black Friday. Google Shopping sales were up 18.6 percent on Cyber Monday, down from the 40.3-percent growth seen on Black Friday. Google search text ads were down 4.7 percent on Cyber Monday and off 7.4 percent on Black Friday.
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