A rush of deep discounts and the growth of flexible payment options was the driver behind $9.8 billion in online sales in the United States on Black Friday — a record for the day. According to Adobe Analytics, sales were up 7.5% compared to last year’s numbers (you can check them out here).
Sales easily exceeded Thanksgiving numbers and growth rate, as well as Adobe’s own forecasts for the day. On Thursday, American consumers spent $5.6 billion, an increase of 5.5%. Analysts originally expected sales of $9.6 billion for Black Friday.
Salesforce, which uses different metrics than Adobe and says it analyzes transaction numbers for about 1.5 billion consumers, said online Black Friday sales exceeded its expectations. Totaling $16.4 billion in the United States and $70.9 billion globally, a record 79% of all shopping traffic – both browsing and purchasing – was done on mobile phones.
Black Friday is a leading shopping day, for many years it was seen as the day that the holiday sales period begins, the most important period for retail. These numbers will provide some surprise cheer for retailers, who have seen generally sluggish growth. According to numbers from United States Census BureauRetail sales in the fourth quarter rose just 2.3% compared to the same period a year earlier. E-commerce, as a smaller and smaller percentage than that (about 15% of total sales), typically grows faster, and last quarter it grew by about 7%.
“Black Friday online sales performance exceeded any retail executive’s expectations,” Rob Garf, vice president and general manager of Salesforce’s retail division, said in a statement. “Retailers have stepped up their discount game and shoppers, in turn, are clicking the buy button.”
Adobe works with hundreds of large and small online retailers and says it bases its calculations on more than a trillion visits to U.S. retail sites, and the movement of about 100 million SKUs and 18 product categories.
Sure, inflation at just over 3% is down from last year (when it was over 7%) but economic uncertainty is still impacting consumers, so it’s worth noting buy now, pay later options as a complement to other types of credit. , continued to grow in popularity. Adobe said that orders using BNPL were up 72% from a year ago over the week leading up to Black Friday, and that BNPL revenue as a result rose by $79 million for the period.
The big question will be whether retailers are able to maintain the growth rate over the next few weeks. The next big barometer-style sales day is Cyber Monday, two days later. We will provide further updates when these numbers appear.
Some other notable details from yesterday:
Discounts remain a big driver of sales, reaching up to 35% of the retail price. The name of the game remains buying gifts and household electronics.
Smartphones accounted for $5.3 billion in sales that day, a massive 10.4% increase from 2022 and representing 54% of all online sales. Adobe expects this to be the norm for this period: mobile devices will actually outsell desktops this holiday season, with more than 51% of sales.
– Perhaps because people are still concerned about spending, they choose cheaper “standard” shipping more often than in previous years. (And honestly, why get something faster now if it’s a gift for the end of December?) Adobe said 80.5% of all orders use standard shipping.
– Adobe believes that “Cyber Week” (from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday) will generate $37.2 billion in online sales, approximately 17% of total holiday sales. Salesforce is more optimistic: It says it will account for 25% of all holiday purchases this year and will total $53 billion globally.
“Black Friday reasserted its dominance this season with a record $9.8 billion in spending driven by new demand for Big Sale Day,” Vivek Pandya, senior analyst at Adobe Digital Insights, said in a statement. “The decline in online prices over the past year has created a favorable environment for consumers, with strong discounts this season tempting even the most price-conscious consumers.”