US desktop retail e-commerce spending goes up

Photo courtesy: ecommerceguide.com

US desktop retail e-commerce spending has shown a sharp growth during the first 25 days of  November–December 2016 holiday season.

According to comScore  $24.52 billion has been spent online  during the first 25 days of holiday season-to-date,marking a 12-percent increase versus the corresponding days last year.

Thanksgiving Day saw a 17-percent gain to $1.29 billion in spending to surpass the billion dollar threshold for the third consecutive year and marking the ninth day of the 2016 season to reach that level. Black Friday (November 25) followed with an even stronger spending day with $1.97 billion in desktop online sales, just under the $2 billion milestone and up 19 percent from Black Friday 2015.

“After a slower start to the holiday season than initially anticipated, Thanksgiving and Black Friday both posted strong online spending totals well above $1 billion on desktop computers and grew at impressive rates that pushed season-to-date growth to 12 percent,” said comScore CEO Gian Fulgoni.

“Thanksgiving has now established itself as one of the more important online buying days of the holiday season, while Black Friday also continues to gain in importance online – this year becoming the third biggest online desktop spending day of all-time after Cyber Monday 2015 and 2014. Looking ahead, we expect Cyber Monday 2016 to surpass $2.5 billion in desktop spending and $1 billion on mobile commerce to become the leading online spending day for the seventh straight year as people use down time at work to continue their holiday gift buying.”

Other highlights from the holiday weekend include:

Apparel & Accessories ranked as the top product category on Black Friday with nearly $500 million in desktop sales, while Toys & Hobbies saw the highest rate of growth from last year.

116 million people visited online retail sites on Black Friday, with 52 million coming via desktop and 90 million via mobile (and 26 million on both).

Households making $100,000+ in annual income accounted for 42 percent of buyers and 45 percent of desktop spending on Black Friday.

More than 70 percent of desktop e-commerce dollars for the season-to-date have come through transactions using free shipping.

There have been ten billion-dollar spending days on desktop through Black Friday this year, while last year at this point in the season only Thanksgiving and Black Friday had reached that threshold.