This Year, Shoppers Experience Black Friday from Their Smartphones

As shopping season enters full swing, Black Friday is off to a booming beginning. According to data from Adobe, Black Friday brought in nearly half a billion dollars by 8:30am EST on pace to reach $3 billion by the end of the day—a growth of more than 11% over last year.

Mobile shopping accounts for 57% of visits this year and 40% of sales, both new records.

“Early morning Black Friday shopping is off to a strong start,” says Tamara Gaffney, principal analyst and director, Adobe Digital Insights.

A lot of shoppers started their hunt early this year, too: Thanksgiving Day totaled $1.93 billion at 11.5% year-over-year growth. People hadn’t even finished their stuffing before indulging in ecommerce, it seems. Indeed, shoppers were getting their licks in long before the turkey was in the oven: Wednesday sales surpassed $1.5 billion, up 19%.

“Mobile visits and purchases continue to surge, and we expect mobile revenue will surpass $1 Billion today, marking the largest mobile sales day in history,” Gaffney said.

According to Adobe, many products this year have steeper discounts than last, especially in tech. For example, video consoles are 12% more discounted on average, while TVs are down 15%.

“Heavy discounts will continue and retailers are expected to release more sale items throughout the day,” Gaffney said.

Adobe’s insights are based on aggregated data from 22 billion visits to retail website.

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