Online retail sales increased 18.4% in Q2, the U.S. Commerce Department says.

U.S. e-commerce sales totaled $64.8 billion in the second quarter, up 18.5% from $54.7 billion in the second quarter of 2012, according to an estimate released today by the U.S. Commerce Department. It represented the largest year-over-year increase since the fourth quarter of 2007, before the 2008 financial crisis sent the U.S. economy into a tailspin.

Today’s estimate, adjusted for seasonality, says e-commerce accounted for 5.8% of total retail spending in the quarter, up from 5.1% for the same period a year ago.  The Commerce Department includes in its estimate purchases made from both PCs and mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. On a quarter-over-quarter basis, e-commerce sales increased 4.9% on an adjusted basis from Q1 2013.

On a non-adjusted basis, the Commerce Department says e-commerce accounted for $60.2 billion of the $1.14 trillion of total retail spending during the second quarter, or 5.3% of total retail spending. Q2 2013 e-commerce sales increased 18.4% year over year on the non-adjusted basis while total retail sales increased 4.5%.

On a non-adjusted basis, when excluding sales in categories that are rarely bought online—such as automobiles and fuel—Internet Retailer calculates that e-commerce accounted for 7.9% of total retail sales in the quarter, compared with 7.2% in Q2 2012.

In a separate estimate, web measurement firm comScore Inc. earlier this month said shoppers spent $54.54 billion via PCs and mobile devices in Q2.  $49.84 billion of that came from PCs and $4.7 billion of that came from smartphones. 

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ComScore started tracking sales from smartphones and tablets in the first quarter of this year. By including purchases consumers make on tablets and smartphones this year comScore is providing a more accurate picture of total online sales than it had when it only tracked purchases made on computers. Given that comScore says the $4.7 billion in mobile purchases in the second quarter of this year represents a 24% increase from the same period last year that suggests mobile sales in Q2 2012 were about $3.8 billion. Adding those figures to comScore’s figures for sales from PCs, total online sales, by Internet Retailer’s estimate, increased 16.2% to $54.54 billion in the second quarter of this year from $46.95 billion in the same period a year ago.

ComScore makes estimates of e-commerce sales based on monitoring the online behavior of some 2 million consumers who agree to be tracked, about half of them in the United States. The Commerce Department makes its estimate based on a quarterly survey of U.S. retailers.

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