While still a huge proportion of holiday sales, retail is dying while ecommerce is booming.

When doing the research, we found that Black Friday brick and mortar store visits dropped 7% last year, while ecommerce sales increased 23%. 

While impressive, we do have to keep these numbers in context, however, as overall Black Friday sales hit $717.5 billion in 2018, up 4.3% from the $682 billion spent in 2017. This is a monumental amount, and ecommerce actually only makes up about $6.2 billion of that number.

Nevertheless, ecommerce is the new frontier, rapidly growing and rapidly changing.

Web hosting and technology review site WhatsTheHost researched the most interesting Black Friday and Cyber Monday ecommerce statistics that you need to know this year and visualized them in this infographic. We highlight some of our favorites below.

Mobile Shopping is Now Commonplace

We’re addicted to our smartphones, and the numbers prove it. What was once an awkward experience, and a rarity, is now commonplace.

According to Adobe Analytics, in 2018, 67% of all digital traffic generated on Black Friday came from mobile devices, compared to 61% in 2017. 

Mobile may still be more of a browsing and research experience when compared to desktop, however, as the volume and value of orders still skew towards desktop.

The National Retail Federation found 66% of all American consumers used mobile devices to compare products and prices in the weekend following Thanksgiving. Although that’s impressive, BigCommerce found that desktop orders averaged $122.37, smartphones orders averaged $88.25 and tablet orders averaged $107.06.

What this shows is that consumers may be not as comfortable buying on mobile for larger purchases, and still prefer the larger desktop experience. Nevertheless, mobile is rising and will continue to play a huge part.

Amazon Dominates

The landscape of digital shopping is not evenly distributed. It favors one giant: Amazon.

The company accounted for 56.6% of all online sales on Black Friday in 2018. For one company, that’s a huge proportion of sales, leaving the remaining amounts for all other retailers combined.

Consumer Trends

While some claim that they don’t fall for the Cyber Week sales, research shows that 86% shoppers are planning to take part in Black Friday, Cyber Monday or other pre-Christmas sales in 2019.

Take a look at the infographic below and use the data for your own holiday media and marketing planning.

Alexandra North is an American translator and content creator for WhatsTheHost.com living in Germany. She loves combining statistics with visual interpretations for maximum understanding – in any language.