U.S. online shoppers have spent $110.49 billion online Nov. 1-Dec. 19, which is a 17.8% year-over-year increase.

A surge in mobile sales and buy online, pick up in store orders are continuing to drive growth for online holiday sales this season.

Buy online, pick up in store orders increased 47% Nov. 1-Dec. 19, compared with the year-ago period, according Adobe Inc. data, which is based on an analysis of more than 1 trillion visits to retail sites over the last 12 months. Adobe Analytics measures transactions from 80 of the top 100 U.S. online retailers.

“Weary holiday shoppers continue to look for alternatives to crowded stores, long lines and empty shelves in the final push to Christmas,” says Taylor Schreiner, director at Adobe Digital Insights. “Retailers who can offer the easiest shopping experience, whether through excellent use of data to anticipate shoppers’ needs or by providing an option for picking up products at brick-and-mortar stores, are the ones people are flocking to this week.”

With Christmas only a few days away, many online retailers’ purchase deadlines to receive gifts by Dec. 25 have passed. This final weekend before Christmas is expected to be especially lucrative for store retailers, analysts say. This also could further increase buy online, pick up in store orders. Pet products retailer PetSmart Inc., for example, is offering shoppers 10% off their buy online, pick up in store orders for Meanwhile, purchases made Dec. 21-24.

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“Retailers have been doing a good job of advertising BOPIS as a channel capability, which is likely prompting more shoppers to try this emerging delivery option,” Schreiner says.

Meanwhile, mobile shopping—including sales from both smartphones and tablets—increased 19.8% year over year, according to Adobe.  Smartphones represented 50.0% of web traffic and 30.1% of web sales, and tablets represented 8.3% of traffic and 8.9% of web sales so far this year.

Smartphones specifically generated $33.3 billion in sales so far this holiday season, which is 57.0% year-over-year growth, according to Adobe data.

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Overall, U.S. online shoppers have spent $110.49 billion online Nov. 1-Dec. 19, which is a 17.8% year-over-year increase. The 17.8% increase is a slight slowdown from Nov. 1-Dec. 6, when online sales were up 18.6% year over year. Still, this increase is ahead of Adobe’s overall holiday forecast for Nov. 1-Dec. 31, which projects a 14.8% year-over-year increase.

On more than half of the days so far this holiday season, at 26 of 49 days, U.S. shoppers have spent $2 billion or more online. This is up from only 15 $2 billion-plus days during this period last year.

Electronics and toys are the top-selling products for the season, according to Adobe, including:

  • Nintendo Switch
  • Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
  • LG & Samsung TVs
  • iPad
  • Fire TV/Roku/Chromecast
  • Beats Headphones
  • Lenovo & Dell Laptops
  • L.O.L Surprise
  • Little Live Pets

Web giant Amazon.com Inc. is taking a large share of these top-selling items. A new report from e-commerce market data firm Edge by Ascential finds that toys are one of the top-selling categories on Amazon.com and generated $400 million in sales Nov. 19-Dec.2.

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Edge estimates that the toys category brought in more than twice as many sales as home furniture, which was the next-largest product category on Amazon.com during this time period.

“Amazon’s success owes a lot to its reputation as ‘the everything store,’” the firm writes. “It’s a huge selling feature all year round but especially during the holidays, when shoppers have lots of gifts to buy and little time to shop.”

Amazon is No. 1 in the Internet Retailer 2018 Top 500.

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