E-commerce is having the best holiday season ever, keeping pace with a record forecast from Adobe Analytics. Cyber Week, which runs from Thanksgiving to Monday, generated $41.1 billion in U.S. online sales, up 8.2% year-over-year.
Last year, the five-day deadline experienced an increase of 7.8% year-on-yearwith $38 billion in U.S. e-commerce sales, according to Adobe.
According to Salesforce, overall U.S. sales (digital and in-store) increased 7% to $76 billion for Cyber Week.
Cyber Monday. Traditionally, this was the day when Thanksgiving vacationers returned to their desks and spent part of the day shopping on their computers. This behavior has changed with more professionals working remotely and more buyers purchasing on mobile, but marketers continue to plan big deals on that day. And the strategy works.
Cyber Monday 2024 was the biggest online shopping day ever, generating $13.3 billion in online sales in the United States, according to Adobe Analytics. This exceeded Adobe’s forecast of $13.2 billion and represents an increase of 7.3% from 2023.
Commerce media platform Criteo saw a 14% increase in online transactions during the first 12 hours of Cyber Monday compared to the same period last year.
Cyber Monday discounts averaged 29% in the U.S., up 2% from last year, according to Salesforce.
The highest Cyber Monday discounts were found in:
General clothing (39%). Health and beauty (34%). Sports clothing and shoes (23%).
“Cyber Monday was a day to splurge, with the luxury handbag and clothing categories seeing incredible growth,” said Caila Schwartz, director of consumer insights at Salesforce. “Throughout the weekend, retailers enhanced their discounts, encouraging shoppers to wait for better deals before making purchases on higher-priced items.”
“Early discounts were deep enough that many consumers felt comfortable hitting the buy button earlier during Cyber Week, with Cyber Monday becoming the “ last call” for shoppers looking to take advantage of holiday deals,” said Vivek Pandya, principal analyst at Adobe Digital Insights. .
Cyber Week. Here’s how online sales held up during the rest of Cyber Week.
Thanksgiving (November 28): $6.1 billion, up 8.8% year-on-year. Black Friday (November 29): $10.8 billion, up 10.2% year-on-year. Saturday and Sunday (November 30 combined with December 1): $10.9 billion, up 5.8% year-over-year.
Why we care. Cyber Monday continues to outperform all other e-commerce days, as well as Saturday and Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend combined. And this despite the rise of mobile shopping. Marketers continue to offer promotions for this day and consumers, wherever they are at that time, are ready to capitalize on the savings.
Another thing to watch closely is that it appears that promotions – and holiday sales success – are growing substantially earlier. The three weeks leading up to Cyber Week saw a 9.6% year-over-year increase in digital sales. It’s not about eating into Cyber Week turkey sales, but about filling the preceding days of November with extra revenue and spreading the gravy.
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Mobile climbing. Mobile accounted for 57% of online sales during Cyber Monday, according to Adobe. Total mobile sales in the United States were $7.6 billion, up 13.3% from last year. In 2019, mobile accounted for 33% of holiday sales.
Salesforce calculates the share of mobile orders in the US at 60%, up from 61% in 2023. Its US mobile sales figure for the day is $7.68 billion.
Retail marketing platform Bluecore has seen an “overwhelming majority” of e-commerce site visits via mobile. Shoe retailers saw mobile in almost 85% of sessions. The lowest mobile category, sporting goods, remains high: 59% of sessions came from mobile.
GenAI Agents. During the early holiday season, when many retailers are deploying genAI-based agents, these early experiences are driving real traffic. (Recommendations and AI agents should provide a fifth of Cyber Week sales.)
And this trend continued when it was important to marketers and buyers. Cyber Monday saw usage of genAI and agent features increase 26% week over week, according to Salesforce.
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