Over Half of Holiday E-Commerce Now Comes from Mobile Devices

Shoppers are using their phones first to search and buy items from their favorite retailers.

Need to Know

  • According to Salesforce, 76% of digital traffic during the American Thanksgiving Day holiday weekend came from mobile devices with 60% of Thanksgiving Day shopping executed on smartphones.
  • Adobe Analytics reports that US citizens will spend $14 billion more this holiday season on mobile devices as compared to last year.
  • With e-commerce growth representing about 63% of the overall retail growth, shopping on smartphones will be directly responsible for half of the increase in retail sales this holiday season.

Analysis

Smartphone shoppers are shattering e-commerce records this holiday season, choosing to click and tap over visiting brick-and-mortar retailers.

Rob Garf, VP of industry and strategy at Salesforce, said in an interview with Yahoo Finance, “The store is certainly not dead, but consumers are drawn to digital for the convenience, for the ease, the access. Really what’s driving that is mobile in particular. We saw, actually, 56% of all orders on Black Friday coming from the mobile device.”

Holiday retail numbers keep growing, showing the vast volume of shoppers spending with their mobile devices. Adobe Analytics reports that Black Friday online sales rose 19.6%, totaling $7.4 billion, just shy of the estimated $7.4 billion. 

Cyber Monday online sales topped out at $9.4 billion in the US and mobile devices accounted for a record $3 billion chunk of that figure. For perspective, at its peak during Cyber Monday, consumers were spending an average of $12 million per minute. 

With brands like Walmart digitizing their toy catalogs and Best Buy launching e-commerce pick-up options, online retailers are seeing major returns on their user experience investments. Adobe Analytics reports that e-commerce businesses with annual sales over $1 billion have seen an increase of 71% this year. Not ready to be overshadowed by the giants, smaller retailers are seeing sales increases of 32%  

“There was a lot of friction,” says Garf of the mobile e-commerce experience.  “Let’s just face it, it was really clunky to buy on your phone for a lot of the time. And now retailers have really smoothed the friction between inspiration and purchase on the mobile device.”

“The phone is, to my opinion, the remote control of our daily lives,” added Garf.

Smarter e-shopping experiences and even smarter smartphones have proven that the consumer is driven by convenience. With a few weeks left to go in the holiday season, Adobe is predicting consumers will spend $14 billion more this holiday season via their phones.