After a sluggish start to the holiday season, online sales have surged over the past few days, according to Adobe Analytics.
U.S. e-commerce sales in the first nine days of November grew just 13.3% year over year. However, there was a marked shift on Nov. 10-12, as e-commerce sales soared 25.7% year over year.
Overall, U.S. consumers spent $18.1 billion online in the first 12 days of November. That’s a 16.6% increase over this time period last year, according to Adobe. Adobe’s data is based on an analysis of trillions of visits to U.S. retail websites, 55 million unique products and transactions from 80 of Internet Retailer’s Top 1000 online retailers.
Adobe attributes the recent e-commerce spending surge to consumers ramping up their online shopping over Veterans Day and Singles Day weekend, when a number of online retailers offered discounts.
Nov. 11—which is both Veterans Day and Singles Day—had significant growth, in which U.S. consumers spent $1.82 billion online, a 29.1% year-over-year increase.
“While online shopping started out slow earlier this month, beginning this Veterans Day weekend we’ve seen it substantially pick up steam,” says Taylor Schreiner, director of Adobe Digital Insights. “Several retailers offered sales for Veteran’s Day weekend that consumers capitalized on, a precursor for the record online shopping we expected during Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday and throughout the rest of the season.”
Smartphone shoppers are already making their mark on the holiday season, with smartphone sales totaling $5.1 billion in these first 12 days, a 51.9% year-over-year increase. Traffic from smartphones represented 48.6% of total visits during this time period, and sales via smartphone represented 28.1% of sales.
Here is how smartphones sales and traffic compared with desktop and tablets:
In these first 12 days, shoppers’ average order value was $134, up 2% year over year.
Desktop, smartphone and tablet conversion rates have also increased year over year. Adobe finds the average conversion rates per device are:
- Desktops: 4.3% conversion rate (4.2% year-over-year increase)
- Tablets: 4.2% (6.8% increase)
- Smartphones: 2.0% (9.2% increase)
Paid search is still a top driver to retail sites, driving 23.6% of traffic, a 6.2% increase during this time period compared with last year.
On Nov. 11, these were the top selling products online: