I know many of you are tired of hearing it, but we’ve got to talk about Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday sales. It’s an indicator of how the Christmas shopping season will go and possibly, how 2015’s economy will go.
Between Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday, retailers made 4.45 billion dollars online. But that’s part of the story. Over a billion and a half, about a third if those online sales, were processed with mobile devices. These stats are courtesy of Abode, who track 4,500 retail websites from mega global corporations to small businesses. According to IBM, basket sales (sales per person) on Black Friday/Thanksgiving Day increased 20% from last year. Electronics continue to lead the charge, especially items like smartwatches, LED TVs, Microsoft’s Surface Pro, and XBox video game systems. If you still do most of your online purchasing on desktop, don’t feel like a dinosaur. Desktop still leads the way in conducting online shopping. But trends are changing. In the next several years, more people will use mobile technology then desktop. Cyber Monday is tomorrow. Cyber Monday has traditionally been the Black Friday of Internet shopping. Adobe predicts- this Cyber Monday will be the biggest yet. Will Adobe be right?
First thing first: Just because Thanksgiving was such a good sales day doesn’t mean we should continue this nonsense. You’ve got the whole month to make money. Thanksgiving ought to be about family and friends and food . It should be no surprise LCD TVs lead the list of most popular electronics. I’ve seen many a Black Friday consumers carrying an LCD TV in reports. Two other trends: increased smartwatch sales tell me more are moving to smartwatch technology. Mobile online shopping increases tells me this method of shopping is now routine. What holds in store for Cyber Monday? And how do you think Small Business Saturday sales did?