Black Friday analysis: $6.22bn in online sales as mobile ecommerce grows

Adobe Analytics has revealed that online sales from Black Friday totalled $6.22bn this year, marking a 23.6% increase from 2017.

The company tracked the transactions for 80 of the top 100 internet retailers in the US and found that 33.5% of ecommerce sales came back from mobile devices, versus a figure of 29.1% in 2017.

As reported by CNBC, this means that Black Friday was the first day in history to see over $2bn in sales from smartphones, and it was predicted that Cyber Monday sales would be up 18%.

Taylor Schreiner, Director at Adobe Digital Insights said: “Retailers have done their part to build better mobile experiences for consumers and turning nearly 10% more smartphone visitors into buyers this Black Friday versus last.”

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CNBC also reported that in total, online holiday sales will reach $125bn in the US this year, with smartphone sales amounting to around half of this.

While 48.3% of visits to retailers’ websites and apps come from smartphones, smartphone sales still only account for 27.2% of revenue for such companies, according to Adobe Analytics – while this is an increase of 11.6% from a year ago, it shows that retailers have a long way to go before they can convert browsing on mobile to sales.

Speaking to Business Chief for an exclusive feature this month, CEO of multinational ecommerce company Spreadshirt, Philip Rooke, said: “With a lot of ecommerce, browsing takes place on buses or in bars when people are on the move or have a spare moment.”

Since 55% of Spreadshirt’s traffic last year was on mobile, Rooke added that Spreadshirt’s goal is to boost mobile sales from this popular browsing, and that the company is working to “simplify the customer’s journey to they can not only browse but easily buy on mobile”.