How much money did Americans spend on this Black Friday, and what does smartphones mean?

Consumer sentiment in America this year is breaking records - despite the recent collapse of the stock exchanges and the abundance of scary stories about what (and who) companies sacrifice for such a price cut. The current Thanksgiving Day has become the most successful for retailers ever - with $ 3.7 billion in online sales alone. But Black Friday easily got around his result. According to Adobe , which tracks trillions of transactions on the websites of the 80 largest online stores, in one day people spent $ 6.22 billion in them - $ 25 per adult resident of the country. So far, the 2018th is breaking all records.

Compared to 2017, sales grew by 24%, with the increase mainly in purchases from smartphones. Now they account for the majority of all traffic to online stores (49%), and more than 33.5% of sales. Another 10% of buyers bring tablets, and a little more than half of sales takes a PC.

Interestingly, Adobe statistics show that most people are still wary of buying from smartphones. Conversion from tablets and PCs (the percentage of people who looked at the product, who later ventured to buy) is about the same - around 5%. But on smartphones, people look much more, and buy less often. Conversion - 3%.

The myth that all Black Friday is not a hoax and a trick was not confirmed. Some stores that have nothing to lose, of course, cheated and re-pasted the price tags in a big way (sometimes even without hiding it ). But in general, prices fell very significantly. Prices for laptops, computers and their parts from November 1 to November 23 decreased by 18%. Prices for TVs fell by 17.5%. But the biggest discounts made on toys: -27% (and this is an average!).

The best-selling products every day were different. So, a week before Thanksgiving, people were buying iPad and interactive toys from Hatchimals (cute little animals that need to be grown from an egg). Directly at Thanksgiving, the top 5 bestsellers looked like this:

1. Nintendo Switch Prefix.
2. Headphones Beats .
3. Toy - racing track Hot Wheels .
4. Red Dead Redemption 2 video game.
5. Hatchibabies (the same Hatchimals, only in diapers and imitating the behavior of the infant).

On Black Friday, all of the top 5 US sales have changed. But in it, again, many places were taken by toys for the smallest ones (which, by the way, we see it very strange, we mainly order sneakers and smartphones). Here are the leaders of emergency:

1. Laptops (sales of Amazon, B & H, Walmart and Newegg).
2. LOL Surprise game sets (American kids in recent months are not so bad hooked on their channel on YouTube, no other brand did it that way).
3. Monkeys and other animals, putting on a finger, fingerlings . The only top product of 2017 , which remained in service.
4. Video Games Let's Go Pikachu! and let's go eevee! for Nintendo Switch. There were no separate discounts in state of emergency for them, but they were released on November 16, and for the first week they were sold 3 million units.
5. The video game God of War for the PlayStation 4.

Adobe only tracked online purchases, but the numbers could well be extrapolated (taking into account the fact that people in the US adore the state of emergency to pack up "discount" TVs at Walmart, but online TVs were not included in any top sales). Before the holidays, in a national survey conducted, 60% of respondents said they were going to be procured online, and 43% plan to look into stores, despite the expected crush.

World of mobile

The main surprise for Adobe experts this year was the unusually high growth of smartphone sales. In one day, they bought goods worth almost $ 2 billion, an increase of 40% compared with 2017. If people continue to actively switch to purchases from their mobile devices, smartphones will bypass PCs over the next couple of years.

This trend is attributed by analysts to two factors. The first is the improvement of the smartphones themselves. They have become powerful enough to comfortably visit any sites and run a number of applications without any problems, and the enlarged screens allow you to examine the goods in detail before purchasing. The second is the orientation of the retailers themselves. Even such "old men" like Walmart have adapted their layout for mobile devices, and almost everyone has their own applications, often with the bonus program included. Amazon on smartphones even with might and main is developing a social network .

As a result, Americans are now not only more often buying from smartphones, but also, on average, spend more (almost 30%) on each transaction. The session duration was 5% shorter, but the quality of the conversion increased compared to last year - to 7.6%.

Taylor Schreiner, head of Adobe Digital Insights, comments on the numbers this way:

Retailers are increasingly investing in improving the mobile experience of their users. And consumers now obviously feel more confident when buying expensive goods. Mobile shopping continues to soar like a rocket.

As in previous years, iOS users spent on average more than Android users (12% more often converted into customers after viewing the page, 14% more pay for goods on average).

Adobe checked only 80 of the largest retailers, but Shopify made a selection of small stores. 600,000 sellers are registered on their platform, and during the peaks of November 23, people bought goods for $ 870,000 every minute . The average bill was $ 90.

Black Friday, according to Adobe, was the second most successful day of online sales in the country - after 2017 Cyber ​​Monday, which brought $ 6.6 billion. This year, he is expected to beat all records and exceed $ 7.8 billion. In real time sales can be visualized on Shopify.

P. S. Black Friday is over, but the most popular day of sales in the US - Cyber ​​Monday - is now in full swing. We recommend to look at the sales sections at Amazon , B & H , Newegg or Walmart . There will be no more such prices this year.

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