Online holiday sales had another banner year in 2017.
Consumers spent $108.15 billion online in November and December, a 14.7% increase over the 2016 holiday season, according to Adobe Digital Insights. And retail sales continued to shift away from stores. The National Retail Federation estimates that nonstore sales accounted for 20% of its estimated $691.9 billion in total retail sales in November and December. Nonstore sales mainly take place online, but also include mail and telephone orders, door-to-door sales and sales through vending machines. That’s a 1.3 percentage point jump from the NRF’s 2016 nonstore sales estimate. Adobe does not estimate e-commerce’s share of total retail sales.
And then there are the flashy numbers: Consumers spent at least $1 billion online on 58 days of the 61-day stretch of November and December up from 53 $1 billion-dollar days in the 2016 holiday season, according to Adobe. The only three days that consumers didn’t spend at least $1 billion online were Dec. 23, Dec. 24 and Dec. 25. Adobe’s data is based on its analysis of 1 trillion visits to more than 4,500 retail websites and 55 million SKUs. $108.15 billion surpassed Adobe’s pre-holiday season projection that shoppers would spend $107.4 billion from Nov. 1-Dec. 31.
A confluence of events contributed to the strong 2017 online holiday sales, including a strong e-commerce market leading into the holiday season. U.S. online retail sales increased 15% year over year in each of the first three quarters of 2017, according to the U.S. Commerce Department. Other economic conditions, such as…