On the single biggest online sales day in U.S. history, consumers spent a whopping $9.4 billion on online shopping. This Black Friday saw $7.4 billion in e-commerce sales, the second highest e-commerce day in U.S. history at the time. The Highest day? Cyber Monday, 2018. Now both have been knocked down a peg, and no one was very surprised. At its peak, between 11 p.m. and midnight, Cyber Monday sales averaged $11 million every minute.
Compared to last year's $7.9. billion day, sales were up about 20% this Cyber Monday. Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) was a big winner reporting their highest single shopping day in history. Their top sellers were LOL Surprise dolls, Keurig coffee makers (NYSE: KDP), Oral-B electric toothbrushes (NYSE: PG), Champion fleece hoodies (NYSE: HBI), and Amazon devices like the Echo Dot and Fire TV stick.
Across the board, toys did very well making up half of the top selling products. "Frozen 2" (NYSE: DIS) and "Star Wars" were among the highest sellers on both Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Other popular items include Nerf (NASDAQ: HAS) products, "Madden 20" (NASDAQ: EA), and the Nintendo Switch (OTC: NTDOY). Among the non-toy items were Keurig coffee makers, Samsung TVs, Airpods (NASDAQ: APPL), and air-fryers.
Of the total sales, smartphone purchases accounted for 33%, an increase of 46% over last year according to Adobe Analytics. All-in-all, consumers spent $3 billion on smartphones this year representing a shift in how people are shopping. In fact, between November 1 and Cyber Monday, smartphone shopping accounted for 58% of the traffic.
Businesses will need to adapt to these increasingly popular shopping methods moving forward. Right now, a big problem with smartphone shopping is cart abandonment. Across all devices, the rate of cart abandonment is almost 70%.
On smartphones especially, shoppers are often frustrated by long or confusing checkout processes; it's also common for consumers to shop around for product on their phone then purchase them elsewhere. Things that streamline the checkout process are important for increasing phone sales. Options currently being used include buy buttons and digital wallets.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are increasingly important to businesses bottom lines. Many depend on the money brought in during the holiday season to bring them into the black for the year. While the holiday season has seen sales increase by only 14%, Black Friday and Cyber Monday both increased by nearly 20%. "Cyber Week" is currently underway, and reporting on Cyber Monday has been somewhat sparse while deals and promotions are still going on. This holiday shopping season has already broken several records, and it will no doubt continue to.