Meanwhile, total retail sales also grew in January (2.34% year over year), according to the Retail Monitor. Month over month, January sales were nearly flat, decreasing just 0.16%, the new report showed.

“January sales continued the strong performance of retail sales in December, which is impressive coming off a record holiday season,” NRF president and CEO Matthew Shay said. “More importantly, year-over-year growth was solid, showing consumers are still optimistic and willing to act on the spending power brought by growing employment and wages. This is a great start to the new year.”

In December, total retail sales had increased 2.07% year over year and 0.44% over November.

January online sales and more

Online and non-store sales were among the six categories the Retail Monitor tracks that grew year over year in January. The other five:

• Health and personal care stores (up 9.7% over January 2023; up 0.51% over December 2023)
• Clothing and accessories stores (up 5.9% year over year; up 0.52% over December)
• Grocery and beverage stores (up 5.9% year over year; up 0.2% over December)
• Sporting goods, hobby, music and book stores (up 1.79% year over year, but down 0.65% compared to December)
• General merchandise stores (up 1.14% year over year, but down 0.64% month over month)

The remaining three categories the Retail Monitor tracks decreased sales year over year:

• Building and garden supply stores (down 1.55% from January 2023, but up 0.48% month over month)
• Electronics and appliance stores (down 4.21% year over year, but up 1.34% over December)
• Furniture and home furnishings stores (down 6.35% year over year, and down 0.97% month over month)

CNBC and NRF’s Retail Monitor does not include automobiles and gasoline in its total retail sales data.

The Retail Monitor calculation of core retail sales excludes restaurants in addition to automobiles and gas. Core retail sales increased 3.24% year over year in January but decreased 0.04% month over month. That compares with 2.4% and 0.19% increases year over year and month over month, respectively, in December.

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Survey data showed that the number of households that bought groceries online grew. However, there was a downward year-over-year trend in order frequency and average order value (AOV), Brick Meets Clicks and Mercatus reported.

They conducted the survey at the end of January 2024 with 1,745 respondents who shop for groceries online. Results compare with those from a January 2023 survey of 1,735 online grocery shoppers.

January online grocery sales in the US

Brick Meets Click and Mercatus define the three receiving methods for online grocery sales as:

• Delivery: Includes orders received from a first- or third-party provider like Instacart, Shipt or the retailer’s own employees.
• Pickup: Includes orders received by customers either inside or outside a store or at a designated location/locker.
• Ship-to-home: Includes orders that are received via common or contract carriers like FedEx, UPS, USPS, etc.

Ship-to-home online grocery sales grew 7.8% year over year to reach $1.5 billion in January. That makes it the only segment of the three to grow year over year, as delivery remained flat at $3 billion and pickup declined 1.9% to $4.0 billion. Ship-to-home also saw a larger order volume in January 2024 as well as a 7% AOV increase.

Still, pickup had the most sales of the three categories, finishing the month with nearly half (47.4%) of online grocery sales. Meanwhile, the 3% growth in AOV for online grocery sales opting for delivery did not offset the larger decline in order volume, Brick Meets Click said.

“When more than 10% of U.S. households have less money to spend on groceries this year than they did last year, changes in buying behavior are certainly expected,” said David Bishop, partner at Brick Meets Click. “The reduction in SNAP payments that took effect at the end of February 2023 is one of the factors driving the flight-to-value trend which we’ve observed and tracked since mid-2023.”

Amazon, Walmart and the online grocery sales arena

Walmart and other mass merchants continued to outperform the broader online grocery sales market, Brick Meets Click said. Mass merchants expanded their bass of monthly active users by almost 10%, according to Brick Meets Click data. They also grew AOV in January, helping to compensate for flat year-over-year order frequency.

At the same time, the number of monthly active users at supermarkets declined more than 5%, and the average number of orders fell at a larger rate, Brick Meets Click said without specifying that rate.

Amazon accounts for the largest share of ship-to-home online grocery sales, Brick Meets Click said. The retailer’s sales improved compared to 2023, “but those improvements need to be put into context,” Brick Meets Click added.

Amazon had lost a “large” number of monthly active users in January 2023, making the growth in January 2024 “driven partially by easier comparable results,” Brick Meets Click said.

“Overall, Amazon’s year-over-year MAU gains more than offset the drop in order frequency, and moderate AOV gains also helped drive its positive sales results,” Brick Meets Click said.

Amazon is No. 1 in the Top 1000, Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of the largest North American online retailers. Walmart ranks No. 2.

“Competing online is only getting more challenging for regional grocers as customer expectations continue to increase,” said Mark Fairhurst, global chief growth officer at Mercatus. “So, beyond improving key elements of the experience, like fill rates, wait times, and product quality, regional grocers also need to work even harder to identify additional ways to help their customers save money.”

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Who has the best curbside pickup experience?

The study from the market research firm Ipsos looked at customer satisfaction among shoppers at 17 major grocers in the U.S., including Albertsons, Aldi, Walmart and Whole Foods Market.

Albertsons ranked No. 1 for its curbside pickup service with a 97% rate of “very satisfied” responses, according to Ipsos. Amazon Fresh, meanwhile, received high marks as well, with the most respondents (76%) saying it was the brand they were most likely to use again.

Rise of curbside pickup in recent years

“From online ordering to meal delivery services, what started during COVID-19 as a necessity has morphed into a method of shopping that people didn’t realize they needed in their everyday lives,” said Silvana Daehn, vice president at Ipsos’ Channel Performance.

“Big-box retailers who sell groceries are making significant ecommerce and infrastructure investments to streamline the ordering and fulfillment processes, from signage and parking to staffing,” Daehn said. “Their goal is to make the buying of groceries and other household items a single, seamless transaction. Pure-play grocers need to invest to keep up.”

Other areas where grocers were evaluated

For customers choosing delivery, Amazon’s Whole Foods Market earned the No. 1 ranking with an 83% “very satisfied” response rate. Albertsons also showed up in that category with the highest rate of delivery customers (61%) saying they were “extremely likely” to use it again.

Overall, Target, Walmart and Albertsons received the best results, with each improving over 2022.

Albertsons is No. 26 in the Top 1000, Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of North America’s leading retailers by online sales. Amazon ranks No. 1, while Walmart is No. 2, and Target is No. 5. In addition, Albertsons ranks No. 2 in the Food & Beverage category of the Top 1000.

Two of the most determinant facts for customers in their responses were reliability and accuracy, according to Ipsos. The report drew from a survey in fall 2023 that included 1,200 Americans.

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The ecommerce software provider defined the holiday season as Nov. 1 through Dec. 31. Year over year, Salesforce said, global online sales grew 3%. Moreover, the global average discount rate across the entire holiday season was 21%. That’s the highest it has been since 2020, Salesforce said. Salesforce uses data from more than 1.5 billion global shoppers.

In North America, 76 of the top 2000 online retailers use Salesforce as their ecommerce platform, according to Digital Commerce 360 data. In 2022, those 76 online retailers combined for more than $116.97 billion in web sales.

Meanwhile, U.S. online holiday spending reached $221.1 billion, according to data from Adobe Analytics.

How much did global ecommerce sales grow during the 2023 holiday season?

By week, the largest sales growth during the holiday season was a tie between Cyber Week (the week encompassing Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday) and pre-Christmas, according to Salesforce data. Each of those weeks grew sales 6% year over year, Salesforce reported. The next-highest sales growth (4%) was in the first week of November. Christmas-week sales growth declined 4% year over year.

Based on Salesforce’s data, order growth was correlated with sales growth during the 2023 holiday season. Cyber Week and pre-Christmas week each recorded 6% year-over-year order volume growth in 2023. Meanwhile, order volume during the first week of the holiday season grew 2% year over year, Salesforce said. Christmas-week order volume declined 6%.

For the holiday season as a whole, order volume grew 2% year over year, Salesforce said. That correlated with 2% year-over-year growth in units per transaction growth, and the increase in average selling price was 0.7% year over year, Salesforce said.

How popular was store pickup in the 2023 holiday season?

Each week of the 2023 holiday season, at least 22% of orders were picked up at stores, Salesforce found — or more than one out of every five orders. That grew to at least a quarter of all orders from the week after Thanksgiving through Christmas week, according to Salesforce, with about a third of orders (33%) being picked up at stores during Christmas week.

Share of online orders picked up at store during the 2023 holiday season, according to Salesforce.

Mobile shopping trends during the 2023 holidays

Traffic to mobile devices grew year over year during each week of the holiday season, Salesforce said. The largest growth in mobile traffic, 10%, was during Cyber Week. The first week of the holiday season, post-Cyber Week, and the week before Christmas each recorded 9% growth in mobile traffic, according to Salesforce.

In contrast, desktop web traffic decreased each week of the holiday season, Salesforce found.

What channels drove the most online traffic through the holiday season?

Each week of the holiday season, direct traffic accounted for the largest source of online retailers’ global website visits. From Nov. 1 through the end of December, Salesforce data shows, direct traffic accounted for 37% of all visits to online retailers’ websites, with three exceptions. During and directly preceding Cyber Week, that traffic source bumped up slightly to 38%. On Christmas week, it dipped slightly to 36%.

Search traffic accounted for about a third of all website visits throughout the 2023 holiday season, Salesforce found, hovering between 31% and 33% each week. Internal traffic accounted for 14% to 15% of visits each week during that time frame, and traffic from social media platforms combined for 10% to 11% of total visits each week. Advertising and email traffic each accounted for just 1% of global visits to online retailers’ websites.

Global web traffic growth from social media platforms grew 10% year over year in the first week of the 2023 holiday season, tied with the mid-season week halfway between Cyber Week and Christmas. Such traffic from social media platforms was its lowest during the holiday season during Christmas week (4%).

Advertisement traffic growth increased the most in the mid-season week (27%) and the week before Christmas (23%). The week before Thanksgiving, advertising traffic growth decreased 4%, the only week with negative ad traffic growth during the season.

Email and direct traffic were the only other channels to have negative growth during the 2023 holiday season, according to Salesforce data. Email traffic growth decreased 2% the week before Christmas, with a larger drop (-16%) during Christmas week. Direct traffic growth also decreased year over year (2%) during Christmas week.

How did returns factor into the 2023 holiday season?

Salesforce data shows that returns during the 2023 holiday season were largely consistent with the 2022 season. The percentage of orders consumers returned each week was essentially flat, with the exception that they grew to 19% during Christmas week in 2023, compared with 16% in 2022. They also grew slightly in the second week of November 2023 (11%) compared with the same week in 2022 (10%).

Share of orders consumers returned during each week of the holiday season in 2023 and 2022, according to Salesforce data.

Returns dipped slightly to 10% during the first week of November 2023 from 11% in 2022, and to 4% during Cyber Week 2023 compared with 5% in 2022.

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Online holiday shopping got a boost

Online shopping was more popular than ever this year, according to the survey. 

57% of respondents said they did all or most of their holiday shopping online this year. In 2022, 51% had said the same. 2020 marked the previous all-time high in consumers opting to shop for the holidays online, at 55%. 2020 was also the first year online shopping topped 50%, according to the CNBC survey data.

The next most popular response was far lower than online. Just 18% of respondents reported doing most of their holiday shopping at big box stores, like Walmart and Best Buy. That figure has been largely on the decline since 2010 when it made up nearly half (48%) of answers. Locally owned non-chain stores (16%), department stores (8%), outlets (7%), wholesale retailers (4%), chains (3%) and luxury stores (1%) made up the remainder of responses. 

Online shopping data bears out the results of the survey. The Cyber 5 period from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday recorded $38.0 billion in U.S. online sales, according to Adobe Analytics. Adobe’s data is based on 1 trillion visits to U.S. retail sites, 100 million SKUs and 18 product categories. Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday each broke online sales records on the respective days. Cyber Monday became the biggest online sales day to date, at $12.4 billion in U.S. sales.

Amazon is the top online holiday shopping destination

Among survey respondents who primarily shopped online, Amazon was the big winner. 74% of that group said they did most of their online shopping at Amazon. Though down from a high of 81% in 2019, it was still by far the most popular choice.

The mass merchant was also the most popular place to shop online among all survey respondents, even those who didn’t say they do most or all of their shopping online. 43% of all adults said Amazon was their top online shopping destination.

Amazon ranks No. 1 in the Top 1000, Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of retailers in North America by online sales. It is also No. 3 in Digital Commerce 360’s Global Online Marketplaces Database, which ranks the 100 largest such marketplaces by 2023 third-party GMV.

The online retail giant accounted for more than a quarter (26.5%) of web traffic to the Top 1000 retailers during Cyber 5, per Digital Commerce 360 analysis of Similarweb data. Amazon had the highest U.S. traffic of any retailer site during that period, and it grew its share of traffic 7.2% over 2022. It called the 11 days between Nov. 17 and Nov. 27, which includes Cyber 5, record-breaking and said customers purchased more than 1 billion items. 

Other online destinations remain less popular

Walmart was the next most popular online retail destination in the survey behind Amazon. 16% of consumers who primarily shopped online named Walmart as their top store. 9% of all adults surveyed said Walmart was their top online shopping destination. Walmart ranks No. 2 in the Top 1000 and No. 9 in the Top 100 marketplaces. The big-box store received 6.8% of Cyber 5 traffic among the Top 1000, a slight decline from 6.9% in 2022.

Walmart said its marketplace had its two most successful sales days to date over the Cyber 5 holiday shopping period. Black Friday and Cyber Monday were the two biggest sales days, the retailer said without revealing specifics. Millions of consumers shopped on the website during those days, it says. The retailer has been investing in its online marketplace recently, and it has growing popularity among online shoppers to show for it.

Other big box retailers, including Target (No. 5 in the Top 1000) and Best Buy (No. 7), were the top shopping choice of 7% of primarily online shoppers. They were also the main online shopping destination of 4% of all respondents. Target and Best Buy recorded some of the sharpest traffic share declines over Cyber 5, down 6.8% and 10.9%, respectively.

A smaller percentage of consumers said they primarily shopped at specialty online stores like craft marketplace Etsy or local businesses’ websites. 14% of primarily online shoppers chose that option, while just 8% of total shoppers said the same. Etsy ranks No. 17 in the marketplaces database.

Department stores like Macy’s (No. 17) and Kohl’s (No. 23) made up the remainder of online shopping. 6% of online shoppers preferred to do most of their shopping at department stores online, and just 3% of total respondents said they do most of their online shopping there.

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That’s down from the 158.5 million consumers who shopped on Super Saturday in 2022, when it fell on Dec. 17. 2022 was a record year for Super Saturday shoppers since the NRF started tracking the date in 2016. 

“Traditionally, Super Saturday marks the final major shopping holiday of the year,” the NRF President and CEO Matthew Shay said in a statement. “While most consumers still have plenty of shopping left to do, retailers are prepared both online and in stores with gifts, decorations and other items that people need to make this season fun and memorable.”

The NRF’s prediction is based on a survey of 7,973 adult consumers conducted from Dec. 1-6.

Super Saturday vs. Cyber 5

Super Saturday will likely record fewer shoppers this year, a break from other major shopping holidays in 2023. A record 200.4 million U.S. consumers shopped between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday, beating last year’s record of 196.7 million, per the NRF. The results surpassed the NRF’s prediction of 182 million shoppers by more than 18 million.

Super Saturday is for last-minute shoppers

Many consumers will be nearly done with their shopping this year, as Super Saturday falls the day before Christmas Eve.

“This year, Super Saturday is truly aligned for last-minute shoppers,” Prosper Insights & Analytics executive vice president of strategy Phil Rist said in a statement. “A majority of consumers also plan on purchasing their last gift in the week leading up to Christmas.” 

Neil Saunders, managing director of retail at analysis firm GlobalData, said the same.

“Super Saturday will be a busy day, but a lot of consumers seem to have shopped earlier this year,” he says. “So, for most, the day is likely to be used for last-minute gifts and quick purchases rather than a day of intense shopping.”

Due to the time crunch before Christmas, more consumers are planning to shop in stores this year.

“The day will mostly be about stores as many shoppers will be uncomfortable buying for online delivery so close to Christmas Day. I expect malls and shops to be pretty busy,” Saunders says.

53 million people (37% of Super Saturday shoppers) plan to shop exclusively in stores this year, up from 44 million last year, according to the NRF. 31 million consumers plan to shop exclusively online. The largest group, 58 million people, plan to shop through both channels.

When the NRF’s survey was conducted in early December, consumers were still on the hunt for about half (49%) of their planned holiday purchases. And Super Saturday might be the last shopping day before Christmas, but for many, it’s not the end of holiday shopping. 70% of consumers told the NRF they plan to shop the week after Christmas. Top reasons for shopping the week after Dec. 25 include taking advantage of holiday sales (48%), using gift cards (26%) and returning or exchanging unwanted items (16%).

How retailers are preparing

Some retailers make a final big push leading up to Super Saturday as consumers search for gifts at the last minute. Delivery app Instacart teamed up with some retailers to hold its first “‘Tis a Big Deal Week” between Dec. 17 and Dec. 23. Participants including Bath & Body Works, Best Buy and Lowe’s are offering 20% off $50 or more orders. The promotions could help them capture some of the last Christmas season spending. 

Because of its close proximity to Christmas this year, Super Saturday will also likely be busy for grocery retailers, Saunders says.

“Many will buy their provisions, especially fresh and perishable items, on that day,” he says.

“Super Saturday will be a big day for food and groceries, last-minute gifts such as beauty and fragrance, essentials like wrapping paper, and apparel both as gifts and self-purchases. Gift cards should also do well on the day,” Saunders expects. 

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85% of all buyers graded their experience on a B2B ecommerce platform as excellent or good, according to a survey of 150 buyers who took part in the 2023 B2B Buyer survey from Digital Commerce 360 and Forrester.

Yet the fact that only slightly over one-third of B2B buyers (36%) graded their B2B ecommerce site experience as excellent is telling. Namely, it speaks volumes about how much work most B2B buyers still must do to meet the big user expectations of the increasingly digital-first customer base. B2B ecommerce buyers do their homework before making an online purchase. But once they do commit, B2B buyers are placing more frequent orders online, according to the Digital Commerce 360 and Forrester Research data.

Understanding trends among B2B ecommerce buyers

Just over 50% of B2B buyers make a digital purchase of a good or service for their organization daily, the survey found. That includes one-third, 32%, who make a business purchase at least several times per day. In comparison, 23% of survey respondents make weekly purchases. Meanwhile, 17% do so every 30 days.

B2B buyers also do their homework before ordering online. For example, 57% of B2B buyers list a manufacturer’s ecommerce site as their first choice, compared with consumer site (45%), Amazon Business (43%), search engine (40%) and distributor ecommerce site (33%).

For many buyers, a better user experience means the seller’s ecommerce site has the products, pricing, and related product selections they need to make an informed purchasing decision and then the ecommerce and order management tools to make placing the order fast, easy, and convenient.

More Charts & Data Stories

Check back soon for more Charts & Data Stories, like our weekly B2B infographics. Here’s last week’s. We add new content regularly. 

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Digital Commerce 360 editors and researchers found out how much consumers spent, where, on which days, and how they paid. We also learned how online retailers approached the shopping-centric days, and which ones offered promotions.

Understanding these spending (and discounting) habits is critical for online retailers, especially if they want to learn what went right — and wrong — before the next busy shopping season comes around.

Here’s an overview of some of our best Cyber 5 coverage this year — just a sampling of examples you’ll find in the rest of this report. Download the entire December 2023 Cyber 5 edition of Strategy Insights here.

The Cyber 5 edition of Strategy Insights covers a lot, including how online retailers capitalized on the holiday season rush in November.

1) Cyber 5 online sales grow 7.8%

We found out just how big this year’s key Thanksgiving-week shopping days were. Unsurprisingly, Cyber Monday is still the largest online sales day in the U.S., with web sales reaching $12.4 billion in 2023, according to Adobe Analytics data. Cyber Monday 2023 online sales grew 9.6% over 2022’s $11.3 billion.

For perspective, the next-busiest online shopping day (Black Friday) didn’t crack $10 billion. This year, Black Friday online sales grew 7.5% to $9.8 billion.

2) Online retailers share how Black Friday and Cyber Monday really went

Despite record spending overall, retailers that Digital Commerce 360 spoke with reported mixed results. For many retailers, 2023 has been about coping with budget-conscious consumers who are choosier about how to spend their discretionary income.

Digital Commerce 360 heard from Adore Me, Meble Furniture, Buy Buy Baby, and other retailers on how they performed during the Cyber 5, and how those results will impact the rest of the holiday season.

3) 92% of top online retailers offer Cyber Monday promotions

We already know Cyber Monday is meant to be the day for online shopping promotions, and online retailers affirmed that. Of the 100 online retailers we paneled, 92 offered some kind of promotion on Cyber Monday. And of those 92 retailers, 84.8% specifically made those promotions about Cyber Monday.

3.5) DNVBs stay steady with Cyber Monday promotions

The trends differed among digitally native vertical brands, though. According to Digital Commerce 360 research, 85.0% of the 80 DNVBs in the Top 1000 ran promotions on Cyber Monday. While many brands were offering discounts, it’s a smaller share than the Top 1000 overall. Just 63% of DNVBs that offered promotions tied deals to the holidays, and many didn’t bother with decorating their websites.

4) Holiday online traffic data shows who shopped for what

With all these deals, online retailers enticed shoppers to browse the web for holiday gifts. Early results showed notable sales spikes in apparel, appliances, toys, and elsewhere. Data Digital Commerce 360 analyzed gives insights into who was doing holiday shopping during the Cyber 5, broken down by age and gender across different merchandise categories.

5) Amazon gains Cyber 5 traffic share from other top retailers

Ecommerce industry observers shouldn’t be surprised to hear that Amazon had the largest share of web traffic during the Cyber 5. And it wasn’t close. Amazon accounted for more than a quarter of all web traffic to Top 1000 retailers from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday.

6) Consumers embrace buy now, pay later during Cyber 5

BNPL usage reached record levels on Cyber Monday, accounting for $940 million of the total $12.4 billion spent, according to Adobe. That’s a 42.5% increase year over year, on top of 85% it grew on Cyber Monday 2022. And with that increase in usage came changing habits.

7) Online holiday shoppers boost record overall Cyber 5 results

Holiday shoppers showed up in historic numbers for online and in-store purchases over the Cyber 5, according to the annual survey released by the National Retail Federation and Prosper Insights & Analytics. That surpassed NRF’s expectations of 182 million shoppers by more than 18 million as more shoppers took to the web this year. Online was the top destination for Cyber 5 shoppers, NRF found.

— Abbas Haleem, Associate Editor, Digital Commerce 360

Additional reporting from Digital Commerce 360 editors Mary Meisenzahl, Brian Warmoth, Mark Brohan and James Risley.

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Shoppers are taking longer this year to decide what they want to purchase, according to Nosto. The company analyzed more than 112 million website visits between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the period known as the Cyber 5. The visits were to 1,127 online stores that use Nosto’s platform, including merchants based in North America, the United Kingdom and other parts of Europe, Latin America and the Asia Pacific region.

Nosto consumer insights from online holiday shopping

Online shoppers viewed 22% more pages on retailers’ websites per visit during the Cyber 5 in 2023 than they did in 2022, according to Nosto. They also spent 10% longer on each page, the data showed.

Compared with the same period in 2022, online shoppers were more than five times as likely this year to click on retailers’ on-site product recommendations. They were 81% more likely to click on personalized content that retailers showed on their ecommerce sites, and 13% more likely to click through product recommendations retailers sent via email marketing.

“Shoppers are definitely putting more time and effort into their holiday shopping, meaning that the retailers who make it easier for them to find the right products are reaping the benefits,” said Jan Soerensen, general manager for North America at Nosto.

Nosto attributes a 4.41% year-over-year increase in sales to the longer browsing time. Similarly, it also attributed a 4.1% increase in average order value for the online retailers to the increased time.

Understanding traffic growth by category, channel

Nosto found that traffic grew year over year among the health and beauty, fashion and accessories, and sporting goods and hobbies categories. Although the highest year-over-year traffic increase was among fashion and accessories brands that Nosto tracks (26.38% growth), the health and beauty category had the largest increases among the three when it came to both sales and average order value (AOV) increases.

Health and beauty online retailers that Nosto tracks increased sales 14.52% as AOV grew 11.21%. Fashion and accessories retailers using the platform increased sales 4.56% as AOV rose 4.27% year over year. Sporting goods and hobbies retailers increased traffic 23.03%, lifting sales 12.85% year over year as AOV grew 7.84%

All the while, mobile commerce accounted for nearly three-quarters of all traffic (74%) to online retailers using the Nosto platform during the Cyber 5. Mobile ecommerce sales represented 62% of total sales among online retailers Nosto tracks.

“However, consumers are still using desktops for their highest-value purchases, with this channel seeing an AOV of $141.59 (USD) compared with $109.01 on mobile,” Nosto said in a press release.

This mobile-majority share of ecommerce sales during the Cyber 5 falls in line with data from Adobe Analytics. Adobe found that Thanksgiving “set a new bar” for mobile shopping. 59% of Thanksgiving online sales came from a smartphone, compared with 55% in 2022, according to Adobe. And mobile shopping carried on strong through the Cyber 5, with 51.8% of online sales coming from smartphones. That’s up from 49.9% during the 2022 Cyber 5 period.

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Early results showed notable sales spikes in apparel, appliances, toys, and elsewhere. Now, we know a little more about who was doing that holiday shopping, thanks to the latest holiday online traffic numbers.

Online sales alone reached $38 billion for the Cyber 5, growing 7.8% over results on the same time frame in 2022, according to Adobe Analytics. New data shows who visited ecommerce sites in November, as well as which categories they browsed.

“As the gift-buying season ramps up, an influx of new customers who are unfamiliar with your products can flood into your sites,” said James Risley, research data manager and a senior analyst at Digital Commerce 360 who compiled the new results. “It’s important for retailers to market to those shoppers in addition to their usual clients, making sure it’s easy for a new buyer to find the right products to give to loved ones.”

Those challenges and opportunities exist across sectors with unique circumstances by category.

“Fashion sites may need to expose more sizing information while electronics retailers can offer tools for checking compatibility,” Risley said. “These kinds of improvements can help retailers make the sale without a helpful salesperson to guide them like a shopper may find in stores.”

What young shoppers looked at

The 25–34-year-old cohort accounted for an outsized share of online shoppers in November, compared to June, according to Digital Commerce 360 analysis of Similarweb data for Top 1000 retailers. That group was responsible for 25.0% of visits to these companies’ sites in November, as compared with 23.8% in June. 18–24-year-olds also rose in representation, going to 19.9% in November from 18.8% in June.

By contrast, older shoppers fell in their share of ecommerce website visits, with those aged 65 years and older responsible for 7.5% of visits to Top 1000 retailers in November, down from 8.1% in June. 55–64-year-olds saw a smaller drop to 12.0% from 12.6%, with 45-54-year-olds going to 15.4% from 15.8%.

These Gen Z and Millennial shoppers made their presence known at apparel retailers, occupying the largest shares of visitors in those categories. 25–34-year-olds made 26.0% of the visits to apparel and accessories sites in November, up from 25.1% in June. Their gained share, along with a one percentage point greater share for 18–24-year-olds came as 55–64-year-olds and 45–54-year-olds each dropped a percentage point in their shares.

25–34-year-olds and 35–44-year-olds also rose in importance for online electronics retailers, with the prior going to 27.3% from 25.6% and the latter going to 22.2% from 20.9% in November.

The toy sector saw a different shift, however, with all groups aged 35 years or older occupying larger shares of visits in November than in June. Everyone younger saw their shares drop.

Online holiday shopping by gender

The online shopping cohort in November was substantially more female than it was in June. 53.7% of visits came from female shoppers during the holiday shopping month, up from 52.5% in June.

That activity could be seen in the toy sector, where the share of traffic from female visitors was 14.2% higher toward the end of the year.

Female shoppers also grew their shares by noteworthy margins on sporting goods (up 5.2%), electronics (up 4.7%) and flowers and gifts sites (3.2%). The only categories where male shoppers saw their shares increase by more than 1% were office supplies (up 6.1%), housewares (up 2.8%) and apparel and accessories (up 2.7%), though they also saw small share increases on hardware and home improvement (up 0.8%), food and beverage (up 0.2%) and mass merchant (up 0.2%) sites.

Most popular categories for online holiday shopping

The season’s biggest spike in web traffic occurred in jewelry, where activity was up 51.4% over June numbers, showing that many consumers waited until Thanksgiving and Christmas to find rings and necklaces. Other large and seasonably appropriate rises in site visits occurred for flowers and gifts (up 48.5%), apparel and accessories (46.8%) and toys and hobbies (up 30.5%) sites.

The only seasonal category drop-offs in site traffic could be seen in hardware and home improvement (down 10.0%) and automotive parts and accessories (down 8.1%), showing that some practical concerns took a back seat while gift-buying took priority for many households.

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The post Holiday online traffic data shows who shopped for what appeared first on Digital Commerce 360.