Online Retail Sales Surge On Thanksgiving Day

(RTTNews) - Online retail sales have got off to a strong start this holiday shopping season, with Thanksgiving Day online sales up nearly a third from last year.

As of 5 p.m. ET on Thanksgiving Day, U.S. consumers have spent $1.75 billion at online stores, representing an increase of 28.6 percent year-over-year, according to Adobe Digital Insights, the research arm of software maker Adobe Inc.

Adobe projects online sales for the day to touch a new record of $3.7 billion, up 27.9 percent from the same day last year. Adobe's data tracks 80 of the top 100 U.S. online retailers, including Walmart Inc. (WMT) and Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN)

Smartphones accounted for more than half the traffic to online retailers. Smartphones contributed 54.4 percent of all traffic to retail sites on Thanksgiving Day, up from 46.1 percent a year ago.

Meanwhile, the share of Thanksgiving traffic from desktops fell to 36.5 percent from 44.3 percent last year, while the share of tablets declined to 9.1 percent from 9.6 percent last year.

However, desktops still generated the most revenue with 52.8 percent of dollars spent.

"Mobile stole the show Thanksgiving Day with smartphones representing more than 50% of traffic to retail sites, as well as record amount of revenue," Taylor Schreiner, director of Adobe Digital Insights, said in a statement.

Traditionally, Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, marks the start of the holiday shopping season in the U.S. However, with several stores remaining open on Thanksgiving evening, holiday shopping has started earlier.

For the entire 2018 holiday season from November 1 through December 31, Adobe has predicted that U.S. online sales will increase 14.8 percent to $124.1 billion, while offline retail spending is expected to increase a modest 2.7 percent.

Meanwhile, the National Retail Federation or NRF has forecast holiday retail sales in November and December 2018, excluding automobiles, gasoline and restaurants, to increase by 4.3 percent to 4.8 percent over 2017, for a total of $717.45 billion to $720.89 billion. The forecast compares with an average annual increase of 3.9 percent over the past five years.

NRF President and CEO Matthew Shay said, "Thanks to a healthy economy and strong consumer confidence, we believe that this holiday season will continue to reflect the growth we've seen over the past year."