Online sales reach new record of $7.4B on Black Friday

El Black Friday this year was the greatest of all time for online sales, as fewer people visited stores and shoppers made $7.4 billion in transactions from their phones, computers and tablets.

By Miami Diario Newsroom

This is just behind the $7.900 billion last Cyber Monday last year, which holds the record for one day of online sales, according to Adobe Analytics. Adobe measures sales at 80 of the top 100 US online stores.

Adobe expects online sales to jump to another record this Cyber Monday with an estimated total of $9.400 billion. Much of the shopping is done on people's phones, which accounted for 39% of all online sales on Friday and 61% of online traffic.

Buyers have been looking for "Frozen 2" toys in particular. Other major purchases were sports video games and Apple laptops.

All the online shopping may have helped reduce the number of people in the malls on Black Friday.

Store traffic fell 2,1% from Black Friday a year ago, according to preliminary figures from RetailNext. Track store activity in tens of thousands of locations, including specialty clothing retailers, big box stores, and mall stores. The drop in traffic contributed to the drop in sales by 1,6%.

However, online and in-store shopping are not always completely separate. Many people buy things online, only to go to the store to pick them up. These sales were up 43,2% on Black Friday from last year, according to Adobe.

This holiday shopping season may be the busiest in years because it's the shortest since 2013. This year's Thanksgiving fell on the last Thursday in November, the latest possible date.

Much depends on the success of the sales of the Christmas season. The US economy continues to grow steadily, but gains have slowed since the start of the year. Economists say strong household spending is helping to boost growth and offset weak confidence among businesses, given all the uncertainties over the US-China trade war and other factors.

Source: WSVN