Black Friday online sales were up 9.5% year over year, IBM says, as robust sales on Thanksgiving Day ate into Friday's totals. The e-commerce sites of two Top 500 retail chains faltered under the load of holiday traffic.

Black Friday online sales increased 9.5% in the United States compared with the day after Thanksgiving last year, IBM reported early Saturday, as some online sales moved forward to the holiday itself. IBM also reported today that Thanksgiving was the first time mobile traffic represented more than half of all online traffic.

“Black Friday online sales were 63.5% higher than Thanksgiving Day,” IBM said in a release today. “This is a decrease from 2013, however, when it was 70% higher as Thanksgiving online sales continue to eat into Black Friday shopping.”

The e-commerce sites of Best Buy Co. Inc. and outdoor gear retailer Cabela’s Inc. both were unavailable for periods on Friday due to heavy traffic.

IBM, which is tracking the results of 8,000 clients through its IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark, reported that for Black Friday:

• Average order value on Thanksgiving was $125.25, down 1.8% versus the same day in 2013; Black Friday was $129.37, down 4.4%. The lower average ticket suggests consumers are becoming more savvy in using online coupons and taking advantage of deals, IBM says. Average order value for consumers using Apple mobile devices was at $121.86 compared with $98.07 for Android users.

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• Referrals from Facebook resulting in an average order of $109.94 compared with $100.23 for Pinterest.

• Mobile traffic accounting for about 49.3% of all Black Friday online traffic, up 23.2% from 2013. Smartphones accounted for 34.7% of traffic and tablets 14.6%.

• Mobile devices accounting for 27.8% of all online sales, 16% from tablets and 11.8% from smartphones. Most of those sales came from consumers using Apple devices (21.9% of all purchases), with Android devices accounting for 5.8%.

• The average order of a consumer shopping on a computer was $135.33 compared to $116.02 for mobile shoppers, a difference of 16.6%.

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In a separate report Adobe, said late Friday that 28% of Black Friday sales were coming from mobile devices. That includes 12% from iPads, 8% from iPhones, 4% from Android phones, 2% from Android tablets, and 2% from other devices. IBM and Adobe each make estimates based on their clients’ results.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. was among the retailers benefiting from mobile shopping this week, with mobile driving 70% of traffic to Walmart.com on Thanksgiving, a spokeswoman says. Thanksgiving Day also brought “more than 500 million page views and our second highest online sales day ever behind Cyber Monday last year,” she says. Walmart.com is No. 4 in the Top 500.

Flash-sale retailer RueLaLa.com, meanwhile, reports today that 68% of its Thanksgiving sales came from consumers using mobile devices. “Customers are even buying big ticket items on mobile,” says a spokesman. “Yesterday, we sold a $10,000 diamond bracelet to a customer in the Midwest via tablet.” RueLaLa is No. 81 in the Top 500.

Mobile shopping, however, played a role in a web site stumble at BestBuy.com. The e-commerce site suffered at least two outages on Thanksgiving, according to Catchpoint Systems. The web monitoring firm says the retail chain, No. 15 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, had site outages between 5 a.m. and 6:30 a.m.  and 8 to 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time on Thursday. The chain blamed mobile shopping. “A concentrated spike in mobile traffic triggered issues that led us to shut down BestBuy.com in order to take proactive measures to restore full performance,” Best Buy says in a statement.

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According to IBM, overall Thanksgiving mobile traffic increased 22.4% from last year. “Yesterday, Thanksgiving Thursday, was the first time mobile traffic accounted for more than half of all online traffic,” IBM says today. 52.1% of online traffic came from mobile devices, a 22.4% increase from 2013.

Cabela’s Inc., the outdoor gear retailer that is No. 51 in the Internet Retailer Top 500, also experienced a site outage, this one on Friday morning, according to a report from Dynatrace, which used to go by the name Compuware. At about 10:45 a.m. Eastern time today, the site monitoring firm captured an image from the Cabela’s site saying it was “temporarily down for updates.” The site seemed fine by 1 p.m. Eastern today and Cabela’s gave no immediate comment though Cabela acknowledged the site problem via a Twitter message with at least one consumer today.

Web traffic figures show how many consumers were shopping today from computers and not just inside stores. By 1 p.m. EST, the North American web traffic to retail sites had grown to 286% above normal web traffic, according to Akamai’s Net Usage Index. Traffic to social media web sites, including such networks as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, was up 35%.

A note of optimism was struck this morning by the National Retail Federation. “Reports of record-breaking online sales and store crowds point to a more confident and savvy holiday shopper who knows when, where and how to take advantage of all the promotions retailers are offering,” says Matthew Shay, president and CEO of the trade group. “It’s important to remember, however, that despite getting out of the gates quickly, the holiday season is a marathon and not a sprint.”

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ComScore predicts web sales this holiday season, which it defines as the months of November and December, will grow 16% compared to the same period last year.  The web traffic measurement firm predicts U.S. consumers will spend $61.0 billion online during the two-month holiday period. ComScore estimated 2013 holiday sales increased 12% over the prior year.

Among the online shopping trends this year is the growing importance of a full week of e-commerce sales instead of a focus on a single shopping day, says Peter Cobb, founder of eBags.com, the seller of handbags, luggage and accessories that is No. 163 in the Top 500.  There is “less dependence on single day sales. We are experiencing this phenomenon,” he says, declining to share sales figures. This afternoon, though, he did offer that mobile so far this week accounts for 42% of eBags traffic, up from 34% for the same period last year—yet another sign of how important mobile will likely be this holiday shopping season.

More evidence that the week is starting to overshadow the day comes from the biggest e-retailer in North America, Amazon.com Inc. Today it was gearing up for an extended Cyber Monday—the first regular workday after Thanksgiving, which this year is Monday, Dec. 1. Amazon today announced its “2014 Cyber Monday Deals,” which start Saturday and will feature “thousands of deals each day – and new deals every 10 minutes,” Amazon says. The marketing effort also will feature for the first time Lightening Deals on Cyber Monday via Amazon’s mobile app. Amazon says Cyber Monday represents its busiest mobile shopping day.

Another read on Black Friday sales comes today from ChannelAdvisor Corp., which helps merchants sell via online marketplaces. As of noon Eastern time today, Amazon marketplace sales for its clients were up 13.5% compared with the same time last year. “Black Friday usually starts slow and then catches up as shoppers get home and continue their search for products,” ChannelAdvisor CEO Scot Wingosays.

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EBay sales were up 42.3%. “EBay is pushing their Daily Deals program heavily as part of Black Friday deals and ChannelAdvisor’s customers are big participants in this program,” Wingo says.

Overall ChannelAdvisor client sales were up 20.8%. “Overall we are still seeing online sales trend over 20% year over year, which is well above the comScore 16% prediction.”

Overstock.com Inc., No. 31 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, today said that its Thanksgiving online sales increased 30% year over year, though the merchant did not release figures. Its mobile commerce sales are up some 60%, according to CEO Patrick Byrne.

Also as of noon Eastern time today, IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark reported:

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• Black Friday online sales that had increased 6.4% comarped with the same day a year ago.

• Average order value standing at $139.80, down 1.8% from last year. Average order value for desktop consumers was at $147.83 compared with $123.09 for shoppers using mobile devices. Average order value for consumers using Apple mobile devices was at $130.18 compared with $103.18 for Android users.

• Referrals from Facebook resulting in an average order of $127.81 compared with $98.28 for Pinterest.

• Shoppers were buying an average of 4.3 items per order.

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• Mobile traffic accounting for about 45% of all Black Friday online traffic, up 21.7% from 2013.

• Mobile sales accounting for 26.2% of all online sales, up 21.8% from last year. Most of the sales came from consumers using Apple devices (20.2%), with the rest from Android.

• Desktop traffic representing 54.8% of all online traffic and 73.7% of online sales.

• Smartphones accounting for 32.3% of total online traffic, with tablets accounting for 12.5%.

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• Tablets accounting for 14% of online sales sales, more than the 12.1% of sales coming from smartphones.

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