But, as growing crowds show up to online stores during the long holiday weekend, out-of-stock rates tend to surge come Cyber Monday and numerous most affordable items are already gone, Gaffney said.
Advertisement
The current record for one-day online sales was set last week on Black Friday, when $2.74 billion worth of merchandise was sold. That puts sales on track for $3 billion, Adobe said.
Adobe says that Cyber Monday’s strong sales volume was driven in part by deeper-than-expected discounts that averaged 21.5 percent.
Owing to the overwhelming number of shoppers, the company intentionally has slowed the site so it can allow as many customers as possible to enjoy the day, affirmed Reck.
Retailers have been touting online deals since the beginning of November.
Shopper checks out Cyber Monday deals.
While IBM’s report does not give a total dollar amount for Monday’s online sales, it does say the company saw a 17.8 percent increase from 2014.
As more consumers flock to online shopping experiences, Cyber Monday is being rendered irrelevant. Target, which offered 15 percent off on all of its stock, was periodically unavailable to visitors over the course of the day.
As per a survey by the National Retail Federation, over 121 million holiday shoppers planned to ship online on Cyber Monday.
Even as retailers were ringing up big online sales, the day provided ample evidence that some of them still have a long way to go to adapt to an era when more and more people are shopping from their smartphones and tablets.
Adobe’s report is based on the analysis of aggregated and anonymous data of more than 125 million visits to 4,500 retail websites on Cyber Monday and uses its predictive model to forecast the remaining hours of the day. The name was also a nod to online shopping being done at work where faster connections made it easier to browse.
He said: “Retailers still have more opportunities to reach customers in the run up to Christmas, with Manic Monday on December 7 representing the time when consumers look to order gifts to ensure they receive them before Christmas, before the traditional Boxing Day sales begin”. The $2.98bn total marked a 12% increase on 2014 and boosted online sales over the whole Thanksgiving weekend to $11bn, a 15% year-on-year rise.
Advertisement
“There are certain hot products, hover boards seem to be a phenomenon, they’re selling out everywhere”, said Scot Wingo, chairman of ChannelAdvisor, which provides e-commerce services to retailers. Physical stores that closed on Thanksgiving saw robust online sales. “Consumers now turn their attention to Giving Tuesday, starting a flurry of giving, which increases average donation size by over 40% and builds strength until it peaks on New Year’s Eve”.
