Adobe: Mobile plays key role in holiday shopping growth

Smartphones drove double-digit increases in online holiday revenue and traffic.

According to the Adobe 2019 Holiday Recap Report, consumers spent $142.5 billion during November and December 2019, up 13.1% year-over-year. Smartphones drove nearly all (84%) of the online sales growth during the period, accounting for 36% of online revenue (up 21% year-over-year) and also accounting for 58% of traffic to retail sites (up 14% year-over-year).

However, desktop still led smartphones in rate of completed checkouts per 100 visits, 5.9 vs. 3. 

Other interesting findings from the recap include:

•    Cyber Weekend (Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday) produced 20% of overall holiday online sales, up 17.7% year-over-year. Also, Adobe analysis found the week before Thanksgiving experienced strong growth because the retail deals started earlier. The Wednesday before Thanksgiving continues to rival Small Business Saturday with $2.9 billion vs. $3 billion in online revenue, respectively.

•    Buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS) revenue was up 35% on average for the season. BOPIS hit a peak in the seven days leading up to Christmas, when revenue increased 55%.

•    Large retailers grew their online sales by over 65% on average, and smaller ones grew online sales by 35%. Still, online revenue growth during the holidays continues to outpace overall retail growth (13.1% online vs. 4% overall). Consumers collectively spent $2.3 billion per day (on average) across the season. In fact, every day exceeded $1 billion in online sales except for Christmas Eve. This holiday season also had 29 $2 billion days (up from 26 in 2018).

“Smartphones drove tremendous growth in online sales this holiday season, and we expect mobile commerce to continue to grow as experiences improve,” said Jason Woosley, VP of commerce at Adobe. “People are more connected today than ever before. We all have a smartphone in our pocket, and that is really what is driving the uptick in mobile commerce and e-commerce overall. This always-on and always-connected trend will continue to accelerate, especially as the definition of mobility continues to expand to new devices and modes of accessing the Internet.”

The Adobe 2019 Holiday Recap report uses Adobe Analytics Adobe Sensei machine learning and artificial intelligence to analyze trillions of visits to U.S. retail sites.