Heading into the CyberMonday stretch of retail’s long holiday weekend, online consumer activity proceeds on forecast with sales increases in the high teens. Mobile continued to play a larger role in purchases, though conversion rates and dollar totals remained higher on desktops and tablets, according to e-commerce observers.
Thanksgiving was far and away the sales velocity leader, posting same-store sales increases of 43.4% over 2014, according to ChannelAdvisor, an optimization platform for third-party online sellers. Comp sales, which the company bases on volume, increased 20.3% on Friday, 16.9% on Saturday, and 15.9% on Sunday.
Online dollar sales for the weekend were up 25.5%, with Black Friday posting a 21.5% increase, according to IBM commerce. Total orders rose 15.6% and revenue increased 16.1% on Friday, according to predictive marketing software provider Custora, which noted that email was driving 25% of all online transactions, the marketing channel leader.
Smartphones produced 44% of all online traffic over the weekend, compared to just 14% for tablets, IBM reports. Conventional mobile wisdom saying people shop on phones but buy on tablets was overturned. Phones transactions shot up 66% over 2014, logging 18.6% of online sales and surpassing tablets (17.7%) for the first time.
Still, PCs and tablets remained the most potent drivers of dollars. With an average order value of $141, tablets surpassed both desktops ($138) and phones ($111) over the weekend, according to IBM. Personalization engine Monetate tallied an identical $141 for PCs, but still had them leading the money board over tablets ($131) and smartphones ($112).
Phones continued to trail far behind larger machines in conversion, posting a rate of about 1.7% on Saturday and Sunday compared to 5.8% for PCs and 3.2% for tablets.
Google Shopping scored big on Black Friday with a same-store sales boost of 36% over 2014, according to ChannelAdvisor. Amazon posted a 29% gain on Friday and held 20% above 2014 levels through Sunday. Amazon, too, rang the jingle bells loudest in inboxes, accounting for a quarter of all CyberMonday-themed emails with read rates exceeding 20%, according to eDataSource.
