Shoppers gobble up holiday deals on Thanksgiving
Associate Editor
IBM estimates web sales increased 11% so far on Thanksgiving Day over last year, while Adobe estimates web sales are ahead by 29%. Both estimate mobile capturing a larger share of web sales over 2013.
Consumers wasted no time cashing in on online shopping deals on Thanksgiving Day. IBM found online sales as of noon Eastern time today were up 11.3% compared to Thanksgiving Day in 2013 and up 11.0% as of 3 p.m. EST. Adobe, on the other hand, says web sales are up 29% through noon EST.
The 11.3% growth is below IBM's prediction of 15.6% growth for Thanksgiving Day, but it's early, says Sameer Khan, senior product marketing manager at IBM. Historically, IBM says sales start slow and pick up throughout the day. IBM will release update sales data at 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. today.
IBM bases its estimates on sales from 8,000 global e-commerce clients. IBM also found that as of noon EST:
- 44.5% of online traffic came from mobile devices, a 26.9% increase from 2013
- 28.4% of online sales came from mobile devices, a 27.9% increase from 2013
- 30.9% of online traffic came from smartphones and 13.2% from tablets
- 15.3% of online sales came from tablets and 13.0% from smartphones
- Average order value was $131.97
- Consumers spent an average of $141.09 on their desktops compared to $115.85 on their mobile devices
- Shoppers purchased an average of 4.5 items per order, an increase of 22.3%
- Online sales were up 11% over the same period on Thanksgiving 2013
- 46.1% of online traffic came from mobile devices
- 29.2% of online sales came from mobile devices
- Average order value was $131.30
- 32.0% of total online traffic came from smartphones and 13.7% from tablets
- 15.9% of online sales came from tablets and 13.2% from smartphones
- Consumers spent an average of $140.33 on desktops compared to $115.57 on their mobile devices
Adobe's 29% growth estimate is slightly above its prediction of 27% web sales growth on Thanksgiving Day. “Thanksgiving morning online sales are coming in at even larger discounts and higher sales volume than predicted as of noon EST," says Tamara Gaffney, principal analyst, Adobe Digital Index. "Afternoon hours will see a lull, but pick up again as consumers go mobile. The day’s peak shopping hour will occur at 10 p.m. EST. We still expect the total day’s online sales to come in less than 1% from our original prediction at $1.36 billion.”
Adobe's estimates come from 34 million visits to more than 4,500 U.S. retail sites. Adobe also found that through noon EST:
- Consumers had spent $423 million online
- $123 million in sales via mobile devices so far
- 29% of total online sales came from mobile devices, compared with 21% in 2013
- 13% of sales came from smartphones, up from 7% in 2013
- 16% of sales came from tablets, up from 14% in 2013
- The average product was discounted 25%
Consumers are certainly window shopping, even if they aren't pulling out the money just yet. By 12 p.m. EST, the North American web traffic to retail sites was already hovering at 165% above normal web traffic, according to Akamai's Net Usage Index. Akamai tracks in real time the traffic to web site in various industries, including retail. For comparison, traffic to consumer goods web sites was 7% above normal, while traffic to hotel and travel web sites was up 7%. Traffic to social media web sites, including such networks as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, was up 28%.
Retailers, too, have been starting the holiday season early. Rue La La CEO Steve Davis says the retailer has been starting its holiday promotions earlier in the past two years—on Oct. 15 instead of Nov. 1. "The season has definitely started earlier for us and started quite strongly," Davis says.
Rue La La, No. 81 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, will launch its Black Friday shopping event at 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving for the fourth year. That event will run through Cyber Monday. Davis says Cyber Monday is usually the retailer's biggest shopping day of the seasons, and he expects that trend to continue this year.
The biggest change Davis expects is in the devices shoppers are using to purchase during the holiday season. "The amount of shopping that transacts on mobile is reaching new heights," he says. About half of Rue La La's sales are on mobile phones and tablets throughout the year, Davis says, but he expects that 70% of sales will come from mobile devices over the course of the four-day holiday shopping weekend starting tomorrow.
Scot Wingo, the CEO of ChannelAdvisor, which helps merchants sell on online marketplaces, has also seen the effects of "Christmas Creep." Wingo says consumers are starting holiday shopping early. "We saw an unusual amount of activity in the third week [of November]," he says. "Consumers are definitely shopping earlier."
ChannelAdvisor releases data on same-store sales, and found a large increase in its clients marketplace sales during the third week of November. On Amazon, for example, sales were up 46.8% in the third week of November compared to the same week last year, a 36.3% increase from week two of November. "While only a week in comparison, this is one of the largest year-over-year gains we have seen from Amazon since 2012," Wingo writes in a blog post.
As retailers ramp up their marketing efforts earlier, data suggests they have been taking it easy on the pricing front. Most retailers have been changing prices slightly, raising prices at the most by 4% and lowering them at most by 1% since Nov. 16, according to pricing monitoring firm 360pi.
“So far, the 2014 holiday competitive pricing landscape has been less volatile than 2013,” 360pi said in releasing its latest pricing analysis.
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