As we heard a few weeks ago, retailers were expecting Thanksgiving Day to be a major online shopping day as more and more consumers are hitting their laptops, tablets and more to get a head start on sales in between Turkey time. It looks like early results point to the day being a profitable one for retailers. According to IBM’s Coremetrics retail data, online Thanksgiving 2011 sales were up 39 percent over Thanksgiving 2010.
Mobile shopping also had a break out day on Turkey Day. The number of consumers using a mobile device to visit a retailer’s site reached a high of 15.2 percent, up from 6.45 percent in 2010. The number of consumers using their mobile device to make a purchase increased to 11.09 percent, up from 4.25 percent in 2010.
The success of online and mobile sales on Thanksgiving is a good signs for Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales as well. As eBay predicts, ‘couch commerce,’ will be huge this year. Basically, consumers will be using their tablets and mobile phones from the comfort of their couches to shop this holiday shopping season.
It looks like eBay may have been on to an important trend this season. comScore is expecting a 15 percent increase in overall online spending during the November-December season; and already online sales are up 14 percent.