As shoppers take a post-Black Friday breather before the holiday season revs up again, retailer can take comfort in how well things are going so far, online anyway: U.S. E-commerce sales since November 1 passed the $50 billion mark this week.
What’s more, that’s up 7.8% through December 5, a pace that would see U.S. Online retailers hit a new record for the season, according to Adobe Digital Insights.
Traditional retailers have grown aggressive this year in fighting Amazon.com (AMZN) for their share of the online pie, efforts that have yielded record numbers during the recent Thanksgiving holiday weekend from the likes of Kohl’s (KSS), Target (TGT) and Walmart (WMT).
But Adobe is optimistic about the rest of the holiday season, expecting another $39.4 billion in online sales through the end of the calendar year. Though the rate of growth slowed because of the current lull, Adobe is sticking with its forecast for 11% growth when all is said in done on Dec. 31.
“This week is an ‘in between’ as shoppers looking for deals bought last week and procrastinators haven’t started yet,” says Tamara Gaffney, principal analyst and director, Adobe Digital Insights. Adobe collects the data by measuring 80% of all online transactions from the top 100 U.S. Retailers.
Adobe isn’t the only one measuring impressive online sales this season: comScore (SCOR) said that online shopping from desktops (so excluding smartphones) had topped $1 billion for 11 straight days starting on Thanksgiving (Nov. 24.)
Some of the moves by retailers to spur online spending have included starting Black Friday deals online 18 hours earlier before offering them in stores (Walmart, Target and Macy’s (M) among many) and offering free shipping (Best Buy (BY) among others) regardless of order size.
Adobe says so far the best selling electronics have been Sony PlayStation 4, Apple (AAPL)iPad, Samsung 4K TVS and Microsoft (MSFT)Xbox. And the blockbuster toys have been scooters from Razor, Lego sets, DJI Phantom Drones and Nerf Guns. And no surprise, out of stock items have included the Hatchimals.