“Cyber Monday” has lost some of its luster, however, with retailers offering online deals since the beginning of November. They originally estimated spending would reach $3 billion, but early on Tuesday the company tweeted that it had surpassed the mark by reaching $3.07 billion, which they say shows a 16 percent increase from past year. Online retailers racked up the strongest growth rate on Thanksgiving with a 43.4% increase in same store sales, followed by Black Friday at 20.3%.
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“Cyber Monday is becoming Cyber Week”, said Marlene Morris Towns, a Georgetown University marketing professor who studies online shopping.
Retail chains are trying to adjust to more people shopping online for the holidays.
Fortune was able to calculate that figure based on projections from Adobe, which tracks around 80 percent of the online transactions that take place each day at the nation’s top 100 retailers. The average shopper spent $135.25, up 4 percent from a year ago.
Retail analysts have been paying close attention to holiday purchasing patterns as more spending shifts online and away from traditional stores.
That would make it the largest day of the holiday weekend, beating out Thanksgiving Day’s $1.73 billion and Black Friday’s $2.74 billion. The company calculates $11 billion in total was spent between Thanksgiving Day and Cyber Monday.
Among the biggest retailer headlines yesterday was that Target’s website crashed due to high demand. Despite the looming specter of ad-blockers, display ads saw the largest growth of 50 percent over past year in pointing people to sales. The name was also a nod to online shopping being done at work where faster connections made it easier to browse.
Cyber Monday did not go without a hitch, however.
IBM’s Watson Trend report said mobile traffic accounted for 47.9 per cent of all online traffic, compared with 41.2 per cent past year.
This year more people chose to do their holiday shopping from home – or from wherever they’re using their phones. “There are several contributing factors, including fewer available store hours on Thanksgiving Day and a later Hanukkah that is anticipated to push sales into December”, ShopperTrak founder Bill Martin said in a statement Tuesday.
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“It’s no longer about one day, but a season of digital deals”, said Matthew Shay, president of retail trade group The National Retail Federation.
