News

December shopping marks biggest online period ever in US

December 12, 2018

A recordsetting $80.3 billion was spent online as of Dec. 6, marking it as the biggest e-commerce period of all time in the U.S., according to Adobe Analytics data.

The spend represents an increase of 18.6 percent compared to spend as of Dec. 6, 2017, according to a press release, and beats last year's record by close to $13 billion.

The data is based on an analysis of 1 trillion visits to retail sites and 55 million SKUs, according to the release. Adobe Analytics measures transactions from 80 of the top 100 U.S. online retailers. The firm is providing real-time data insight here.

Mobile transactions spiked to $23.7 billion of sales from smartphones alone, reflecting the highest year-over-year growth to date of 54.8 percent. Adobe said this holiday season is the first ever with over half of visits, 57.6 percent, coming from mobile devices.

Adobe forecasts that the holiday season (Nov. 1 to Dec. 31) will see at least $124.1 billion in total U.S. online retail sales.

"Retailers are reaping the rewards of their investments in mobile and have seen unprecedented success in converting mobile traffic to sales. So far this season, we see $8.4 billion more dollars coming from smartphones versus last year, compared to $3.8 billion more dollars coming from desktop computers compared to last year," stated Taylor Schreiner, director, Adobe Digital Insights, in the release.