Online Sales Reach Record On Black Friday

(RTTNews) - This year's Black Friday online sales was a record $5.03 billion, representing a 16.9 percent increase over the prior year's $4.3 billion, according to data released by Adobe Analytics.

Thanksgiving Day also saw a record $2.87 billion in online sales, up 18.3 percent from last year. Adobe Analytics data is based on looking at more than 1 trillion visits to more than 4,500 retail sites.

Adobe has said it expects this year's Cyber Monday to become the largest online shopping day in history, generating $6.6 billion in sales and representing 16.5 percent growth compared to last year.

The four-day weekend, including Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday and Cyber Monday, is one of the biggest shopping weeks of the year. For years, Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, remained one of the busiest shopping days of the year, even though it is losing its preference these days with more and more online shopping.

This year's holiday shopping season so far, from November 1 to November 24, has seen $38.31 billion in online shopping revenue, according to Adobe data. That marks a year-over-year increase of 17.8 percent.

This year, Nintendo Switch as well as Chromecast and Roku streaming devices were among the top selling items on Black Friday. In addition, Hatchimals & Colleggtibles toys and PJ Masks featured among the top-selling items.

The National Retail Federation or NRF has said it expects holiday retail sales in November and December, excluding automobiles, gasoline and restaurants, to increase between 3.6 percent and 4 percent for a total of $678.75 billion to $682 billion, from holiday retail sales of $655.8 billion last year.

The NRF, whose overall industry sales data is closely watched each year, is scheduled to release sales figures for the Thanksgiving Weekend on Tuesday, November 28.