Confident they could order online just days before Christmas and still get their orders in time for the holiday, U.S. consumers purchased heavily from retail websites late in the holiday season, boosting overall sales for the festive period up 12.7% over last year to $83 billion, Adobe Inc. reported today.
While e-retail growth for most of the season averaged under the 11% Adobe had projected, there was a surge of web orders in the last week. That was especially notable on Dec. 23, when sales spiked 56% over the same day in 2014, the largest growth rate for any day during the November-December holiday season, according to Adobe data.
Adobe attributes the increase to more retailers offering the option to pick up online orders in stores and growing consumer confidence that online retailers will deliver on promises for expedited delivery in the last week before the holiday.
“During the last couple of years, there was a lot of talk about retailers trying to spread out the holiday season,” Tyler White, an analyst for Adobe Digital Index, a research arm of marketing technology provider Adobe. “This year, they really weren’t able to get the buying started that much earlier, but they were able to keep it going longer into the Christmas week.”
Adobe says its estimates are based on visibility into 75% of the online transactions by the 500 leading online retailers. Adobe’s estimate is in line with the 13% year-over-year growth estimate of comScore Inc., which bases its projections on the activity of a consumer panel.
Also notable in the Adobe data is how much more consumers shopped on smartphones over the holiday season. 17% of online sales came from mobile phones during the 2015 holiday period, versus 9% a year earlier, and those phones accounted for 39% of visits to retailers’ websites, up from 30% a year earlier.
That growing smartphone traffic, which experts attribute to improve retailer mobile websites and apps and larger phones, cut into traffic and sales from desktops and tablets. Desktops accounted for 73% of online purchases during the 2015 holiday season versus 78% a year earlier, and tablets 11% in 2015 versus 12% in 2014. In terms of traffic, desktop’s share fell to 50% from 56% and tablets’ from 14% to 11%.
Other highlights from Adobe’s holiday report include:
- There were 31 days when online sales exceeded $1 billion—every day from Nov. 22 (the Sunday before Thanksgiving) through Dec. 22, up from 25 billion-dollar days in 2014.
- Apple iPhones accounted for 46% of mobile visits to retail sites, Android phones 30%, iPads 18% and Android tablets 5%. Other tablets and phones accounted for the rest. IPhones accounted for 38% of mobile sales, iPads 37%, Android phones 17%, and Android tablets 6%. However, the average order on an Android tablet was $132, compared to $114 for iPads.
- Conversion rate on phones was 1.7% versus 2.8% on tablets and 2.97% on desktops.
- Cyber Monday (the Monday after Thanksgiving) was the biggest online shopping day of the season, with $3 billion in sales, up 12%. Next came Black Friday (the Friday after Thanksgiving) at $2.7 billion, up 15%, followed by Dec. 14 (Green Monday), $1.89 billion, up 8%; Monday, Dec. 7, $1.79 billion, up 2%; and Thanksgiving Day, $1.6 billion, an increase of 18%. On Christmas Day, consumers purchased $770 million online, up 40% over 2014.
- 1% of products accounted for 76% of sales. Electronics accounted for 60% of online sales, gift cards 10% and all other products 30%.
- The average online purchase was $113; AOV peaked on Thanksgiving Day at $159.
- Conversion rate and average order value both fell during the last week before Christmas, but a surge in online traffic boosted sales.
- The percentage of products that were out of stock on retailers’ websites fluctuated significantly over the season, which Adobe says suggests many retailers promoted products for a limited time or in limited quantities. The percentage of products viewed online that were not available peaked at around 16% in mid-December.
- Discounts were highest on Thanksgiving Day and then trended downwards. Electronics offered the only “significant discounts” on Thanksgiving Day, Adobe says. Apparel retailers, many hit by unusually warm weather, offered greater discounts as the holiday wore on. The best prices on toys were on the second Monday of December and jewelry e-retailers offered their biggest discounts on weekends in December.
- Email drove 15% of sales on retail websites, up from 14% in 2014. Display ads showed the biggest percentage growth, accounting for 2.5% of sales in 2015 versus 1.7% a year earlier. Affiliate websites accounted for 30% of retail sales and search engines 29%, each down 1 percentage point from a year earlier. Purchases resulting directly from clicks from social networks remained low at 1.4% in 2015, down from 1.8% in 2014. “Social is key to awareness, but not a good traffic referrer,” Adobe concludes. Consumers navigating directly to a retailer’s site accounted for 22% of sales, unchanged from a year earlier.