Black Friday reveals US mobile shopping growth

Tech giant IBM has reported that 21.8 per cent of all US online sales on the Black Friday shopping holiday were made from a mobile device. The revenue generated from mobile by retailers rose 43 per cent year on year, and mobile traffic accounted for 39.7 per cent of all online traffic on the day.

The IT firm’s 2013 Holiday Benchmark Report also revealed insights into mobile shopping habits, revealing that US consumers use their smartphones to browse goods but tablet devices to purchase them. Smartphone traffic represented 24.9 per cent of all online traffic whereas tablets accounted for just 14.2 per cent. However, 14.4 per cent of all online sales were made via tablets – twice as many as those made by smartphones (7.2 per cent).

Sales made from tablet devices were also higher value than those made by smartphones, with tablet users spending $132.75 from their device on average, 15 per cent more than the smartphone average of $115.63.

The report also showed that iOS users spent an average of $127.92 per order compared with the $105.20 spent on average by Android users. iOS sales also represented 18.1 percent of all online sales, compared to 3.5 percent for Android. Traffic from iOS devices on the day more than doubled that of Android devices, with iOS traffic representing 28.2 per cent of all online traffic compared with 11.4 per cent from Android devices.

Overall, Black Friday sales increased 19 per cent compared with 2012 with an average order value of $135.27, up 2.2 per cent year on year.

The data came from IBM’s real-time monitoring of over 800 US online retailers.

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