There was plenty for online retailers to celebrate during the holiday season.

E-commerce accounted for 29% of all transactions during the Oct. 28-Jan. 1 period, up from 26% in the comparable period in 2016, according to payment processor First Data, which based its results on data from more than 1.3 million U.S. merchants. Moreover, the average e-commerce ticket was $103.49, 50.9% more than the $68.57 average ticket among physical stores.

There were many reasons behind the strong season, says Michael Klein, director of industry strategy for retail at Adobe. For instance, because Thanksgiving was early (Nov. 23), there was a longer period between Thanksgiving and Christmas compared with 2016. That helped many consumers get in the holiday shopping mindset earlier and provided a few…

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