This year's Cyber Monday just shattered e-commerce records
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- It's official: This Cyber Monday was the biggest online-shopping day ever.
- Deep discounts encouraged US shoppers to spend more on electronics, apparel, and luxury goods.
- The day capped off a big week of spending, signaling a strong start to retail's holiday season.
Cyber Monday was officially the biggest online-shopping day ever, according to fresh data from Adobe and Salesforce.
Depending on which you ask, US shoppers spent $13.3 billion (per Adobe) or $12.8 billion (per Salesforce) on Monday alone. In both cases, this year's number was up by a low-single-digit percentage from last year's marquee digital-sales day, which set the previous online-shopping record.
"It is a top discounting day," Salesforce's director of consumer insights, Caila Schwartz, told Business Insider. "It was one of the better days for online discounting compared to the rest of the week."
Deep markdowns in categories like electronics (30% off on average, tracked by Adobe) or apparel (39% off on average, tracked by Salesforce) encouraged inflation-pressured shoppers to spend more.
Meanwhile, others splurged on luxury goods and other big-ticket items that they'd been saving for since earlier year and planning to purchase during this holiday event, Schwartz said, citing customer surveys.
Taken together, the focus on deals and more carefully planned purchases suggest a shopper still stressed by high prices but nevertheless willing to spend during key moments — a profile that echoes recent remarks from major retailers' earnings calls.
The average order value on Cyber Monday rang in at $124 per transaction and included 3.5 items, Salesforce found.
As expected, shoppers increasingly used their phones to find and buy items, with more than three-quarters of website visits coming from mobile devices, Salesforce said. Mobile sales accounted for more than half of the Cyber Monday total, Adobe found.
"We're seeing that the consumer is getting a lot more comfortable not only doing research and browsing from their phones but also transacting from their phones for those bigger ticket items," Salesforce's Schwartz said.
"With those larger purchases — luxury electronics, even furniture and appliances — the mobile experience is getting a lot better, more intuitive," she added.
Online shoppers were also busier than usual in the days leading up to Monday — now called Cyber Week — with Thanksgiving and Black Friday seeing considerable sales growth over last year.
"Early discounts were strong enough that many consumers felt comfortable hitting the buy button earlier during Cyber Week, with Cyber Monday becoming 'last call' for shoppers to take advantage of big holiday deals," Adobe Digital Insights' lead analyst, Vivek Pandya, said in a statement.
The biggest discounts appear to be over, but some markdowns remain, and the sales so far signal a strong start to retail's holiday season.
Adobe expects total US holiday sales this year to top $240 billion, up 8.4% from last year. Salesforce's forecasts are closer to 8% growth for the period.
"We're still on track for another record-breaking digital holiday season," Schwartz said.