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Online Black Friday shopping at a record high

Last Thanksgiving weekend was the strongest ever in online sales, with Americans spending just over $1 billion online on Thanksgiving Day, and $1.5 billion on Black Friday, according to Forrester Research. This represents an astounding 32% and 26% respective growth from last year’s numbers. IBM reported that mobile devices accounted for 51.2% of all e-commerce browsing, and 28.9% of sales. Forrester backed up these numbers, saying 213 million consumers are expected to have smartphones in 2014. All of this will contribute to what Forrester is calling a record year, with the U.S. reaching an all-time high of online sales this year of $89 billion, up 13% on 2013 and accounting for 30% of all eCommerce spending in 2014, yet with growth down by several percentage points compared to recent years.

In general, sales at physical retailers and online on Friday fell by 11% from last year from $57.4 billion in 2013 to $50.9 billion this year, which analyst Sucharita Mulpuru claimed is due to the day being eclipsed by Cyber Monday and early sales, as well as shipping issues.

Forrester also noted some more interesting trends, one being 3.4 million new online buyers this year compared to last year. They pointed out however, that the number of new online buyers is actually decreasing each year, since “most online customers are already shopping online.” The average individual who buys online will buy more online this year than last year, partly because of familiarity with the experience, but also because there’s just more to buy online now.

In terms of consumers’ platform of choice, IBM is reporting that more sales come from iOS users, and mobile users with bigger screens. iOS users averaged $117.45 per order versus $97.74 for Android users, and iOS sales accounted for 22.7% of total online sales, nearly four times that of Android at a mere 6% of all online sales. iOS traffic accounted for 35.4% of total online traffic, more than double that of Android at 15.4%. Desktop PC traffic represented 48.6% of all online traffic, but 71.1% of all online sales, with an average order value of $128.60 versus $112.81 on mobile devices.

This data exposes an interesting trend in the way consumers are getting their shopping done, particularly in that owners of big-screened phones bought more than owners of smaller-screened phones. This could simply indicate that people who can afford big phones are more likely to spend more during the holidays, but it could also point to something about the shopping experience on big phones that makes users likely to spend more. Whether it’s the bigger pictures of items, more comfortable browsing experience, or just the higher ease of typing in payment information is anyone’s guess, but there’s no doubt that smartphone manufacturers will be looking at these trends and using them in research and development stages of new products. Simply put, we may see phones get bigger before they get smaller.

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