How much money the Americans spent this Black Friday, and what do smartphones have to do with it?

This year, consumer sentiment in America is breaking records - despite the recent collapse of exchanges and the abundance of scary stories about what (and by whom) companies sacrifice for such a price cut. This Thanksgiving has been the most successful for retailers in history - with $ 3.7 billion in online sales alone. But Black Friday easily circumvented his result. According to Adobe , which tracks trillions of transactions on the sites of the 80 largest online stores, in one day, people spent $ 6.22 billion in them - $ 25 for every adult in the country. So far, 2018 is breaking all records.

Compared to 2017, sales grew by 24%, with the majority of the growth coming from purchases from smartphones. Now they account for the majority of all traffic to online stores (49%), and more than 33.5% of sales. Another 10% of buyers bring tablets, and a little more than half of the sales are taken to a PC.

Curiously, Adobe statistics show that most are still wary of purchases from smartphones. The conversion from tablets and PCs (the percentage of people who viewed the product, who then ventured to buy) is about the same - in the region of 5%. But on smartphones, people look much more and buy less often. Conversion - 3%.

The myth that the whole Black Friday is a hoax and a hoax has not been confirmed. Some stores that have nothing to lose, of course, cheated and re-glued price tags up (sometimes even without hiding it ). But overall, prices fell very significantly. Prices for laptops, computers and their spare parts from November 1 to November 23 decreased by 18%. TV prices fell 17.5%. But the biggest discounts were on toys: -27% (and this is an average!).

The best-bought items every day were different. So, on the week before Thanksgiving, people in full bought an iPad and Hatchimals interactive toys (cute little animals that need to be grown from an egg). Directly on Thanksgiving, the top 5 sales leaders looked like this:

1. Consoles, the Nintendo Switch .
2. Headphones Beats .
3. Toy - Hot Wheels racing track .
4. Video game Red Dead Redemption 2 .
5. Hatchibabies (the same Hatchimals, only in diapers and imitating the behavior of the baby).

On Black Friday, the entire top 5 US sales changed. But in it, again, many places were occupied by toys for the smallest (which, incidentally, is very strange for us to see, mainly sneakers and smartphones are ordered through us). Here are the leaders of the emergency:

1. Laptops (Amazon, B&H, Walmart, and Newegg sales).
2. LOL Surprise game sets (American kids in recent months have not so badly hooked on their YouTube channel , no other brand has succeeded).
3. Monkeys and other animals, worn on a finger, fingerlings . The only top-end product of 2017 that remained in service.
4. Video Games Let's Go Pikachu! and let's go eevee! for Nintendo Switch. There were no separate discounts in state of emergency for them, but they were issued on November 16, and in the first week they were sold 3 million units.
5. God of War video game for PlayStation 4.

Adobe only tracked online purchases, but the numbers can be extrapolated (adjusted for the fact that people in the US love to buy “discounted” televisions at Walmart, but online TVs have not reached any of the top sales). Before the holidays, in a national survey, 60% of respondents said they were going to buy online, and 43% planned to drop into stores, despite the expected stampede.

World of mobile

The main surprise for Adobe experts this year was the unusually high growth in smartphone sales. Almost $ 2 billion worth of goods were bought from them in one day, an increase of 40% compared to 2017. If people continue to just as actively switch to purchases from their mobile devices, smartphones will bypass the PC in profit within the next couple of years.

Analysts explain this tendency by two factors. The first is the improvement of the smartphones themselves. They have become powerful enough to comfortably visit any sites and launch a number of applications without problems, and the enlarged screens allow you to examine the goods in detail before buying. The second is the orientation of the retailers themselves. Even such "old men" as Walmart adapted their layout for mobile devices, and almost everyone has their own applications, often with the included bonus program. Amazon on smartphones is even developing its social network .

As a result, Americans now not only buy more often from smartphones, but also spend on average more (almost 30%) on each transaction. The duration of the session was 5% shorter, but the quality of conversion compared to last year increased to 7.6%.

Taylor Schreiner, head of Adobe Digital Insights, comments on the numbers:

Retailers are increasingly investing in improving the mobile experience of their users. And consumers now obviously feel more confident when buying expensive goods. Mobile shopping continues to take off like a rocket.

As in previous years, iOS users spent on average more than Android users (12% more likely to convert to a buyer after viewing the page, 14% more on average pay for the product).

Adobe tested only the 80 largest retailers, but Shopify made a selection of small stores . 600,000 sellers were registered on their platform, and at the peak of November 23, people bought $ 870,000 worth of goods from them every minute . The average bill was $ 90.

Black Friday, according to Adobe, was the second most successful day of online sales in the country - after Cyber ​​Monday 2017, which brought $ 6.6 billion. This year it is expected that it will break all records and exceed $ 7.8 billion. In real Time for sales visualization can be monitored on Shopify.

P . The S . Black Friday is over, but the most popular US sales day - Cyber ​​Monday - is in full swing. We recommend a look at the sales sections at Amazon , B&H , Newegg or Walmart . There will no longer be such prices this year.

Pochtoy.com will help deliver any goods from US stores to Russia. After registration, all readers receive a 7% discount on the HABR code.