After a particularly strong Thanksgiving for online sales, shoppers continued to look for e-commerce deals on Black Friday. IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark is reporting the final tally for Black Friday online sales: a surge of 20.7 percent in spending from last year. The biggest surge on Friday came from mobile consumers, with sales reaching 16.3 percent, led by the iPad.
Overall, mobile purchases soared over the holiday with 24 percent of consumers using a mobile device to visit a retailer’s site, up from 14.3 percent in 2011. Mobile sales exceeded 16 percent, up from 9.8 percent in 2011. Unsurprisingly, the iPad contributed to more traffic than any other smartphone or tablet, taking 10 percent of online shopping. This was followed by iPhone at 8.7 percent and Android at 5.5 percent.
The iPad also dominated tablet traffic at 88.3 percent followed by the Barnes & Noble Nook at 3.1 percent, Amazon Kindle at 2.4 percent and the Samsung Galaxy at 1.8 percent. Overall 58 percent of consumers used smartphones compared to 41 percent who used tablets to surf for bargains on Black Friday.
IBM says that average order value dropped by 4.7 percent to $181.22. In addition, the average number of items per order decreased 12 percent to 5.6.
Shoppers referred from social networks generated .34 percent of all online sales on Black Friday, a decrease of more than 35 percent from 2011.
IBM says the surge in sales this year was likely due to earlier promotions, more personalized deals and mobile shopping increases. By sector, department stores online continued to see sales grow by 16.8 percent over Black Friday 2011. Health and Beauty sales increased 11 percent year over year; home goods saw a 28.2 percent increase in sales and apparel sales saw an increase of 17.5 percent over 2011.
IBM doesn’t actually release a dollar amount spent, but we’ll see this number from comScore soon.