Black Friday Shopping Set New Records

Black Friday is the start of the holiday shopping season. This year WWD reports that the mobile and international sales hit an all time record high.

To give you an idea of what that means,Adobe Digital Index tracked e-commerce sales at over $2 billion for the first time, out selling Cyber Monday sales over the past years. This was a 25 percent increase from $1.8 billion in sales last year.

One of the newest trends of this year's online shopping was getting the deals before the big holiday meal. In years past online shopping peaked at 6pm but this year it was 11am. Also, WWD reported that 27 percent of the transactions were coming from smartphones.

Tamara Gaffney, principal analyst at Adobe Digital Index, told WWD, "There were so many promotions released that morning that folks felt they had to get stuff bought before it went out of stock. That changed the shopping pattern across the whole United States."

The high percentage in sales were not just limited to big stores like Target and Walmart. Flash sites like Gilt saw major activity on Thanksgiving and Black Friday outside the U.S.

"Domestic grew nicely, but international was more significant," said Michelle Peluso, Gilt's chief executive officer. Gilt offered special sales at midnight Friday to cater to these international markets (those same sales launched at 9 a.m. in the U.S.). "It reflects a lot of what we're doing to tailor the experience there [in Asia], like launching Alipay, Singles' Day and using local forms of currency."

Cyber Monday is predicted to bring in even more than Black Friday this year. We'll have to wait and see but in the meantime, get shopping. You don't want to miss any of the sales!

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