Expectations for this year's holiday spend online werelukewarm but early activity has bucked predictions. Cyber Monday brought in $11.3 billion in online sales according to figures from Adobe. On the same day last year, consumers spent $10.7 billion, but this year they spent $10.8 billion, setting a record for the day and the year to date.
The day is usually the biggest of the long weekend because sales continue and people return to work. Black Friday had $9.12 billion in sales, up from earlier predictions, and Thanksgiving had $5.29 billion in sales, up from earlier predictions. There was $9.55 billion in sales over the weekend. In the month of November and December, online sales will be up 4% over last year and account for 16.7% of all sales.
For the two months, Adobe expects $210 billion in sales, and so far in the season mobile has accounted for 42% of sales.
The $6 billion figure was released by the company in the evening Monday. These will be updated as we get more complete results.
Adobe said that the figures were based on more transactions overall. Adobe said that its digital price index, which tracks prices across 18 categories, said that prices have been nearly flat recently.
Retailers anticipating needing to have something more to lure shoppers have played a big role, as have the sheer availability of goods after shortages of the years before.
Retailers made the right call this season to drive demand through heavy discounting due to oversupply and a softer consumer spending environment. It reinforced e- commerce as a major channel to drive volume and capture consumer interest and spurred online spending to levels that were higher than expected.
The biggest sales were in toys with an average discount of 34%, and the biggest discounts were on electronics.
One trillion visits to U.S. retail sites are used to calculate Adobe's data.
Most popular categories show the amount of buying done in preparation for the holidays. Games, Legos, Disney Encanto, Pokémon cards, Bluey, Dyson products, strollers, Apple Watches, drones, and digital cameras were among the top products. The category of toys saw a big increase in sales.
In other trends, buy-now-pay-later transactions (BNPL) continued to be force in how purchases are being made, although they appeared to be down slightly on Monday compared to Black Friday and the weekend. The orders were up 85% over last week.
When people are back at their desks, Cyber Monday has a lower proportion of online sales than on Thanksgiving.
The big question is whether online retailers sustain this activity or if this was an outsized push around discounts that will settle down in the days and weeks to come There have been layoffs in the e- commerce sector and depressed valuations for companies in the space.
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