It seems that despite continued concerns of a slow US economy, this year's Black Friday, denoting the start of the Christmas shopping season and a day for big special offers across the pond, has witnessed record sales, at least for e-commerce that it.
Marketing company, ComScore, claims that this year's Black Friday saw $816 million in on-line sales against the $648 million of last year, a rather large, 26 per cent increase; significant as 2009 to 2010, the year before, saw an increase of only nine per cent.
The most popular e-tailing site was Amazon, followed by Walmart, Best Buy, Target and Apple, with leaked figures suggesting that Apple's retail sales were also much higher than expected. Even IBM, a company one would not typically associate with sales rushes, saw e-commerce sales increase 24.3 per cent over last year.
Mobile traffic has seen the sharpest rise, up from 5.6 per cent in 2010 to 14.3 per cent this year, an increase of over 150 per cent. Perhaps eBay is on the right track, opening pop-up stores with QR barcodes for mobile purchases?
It's now Cyber Monday in the US and to a lesser extent, the UK, a day dedicated to persuading people to shop on-line, will these impressive figures keep up?
For those of us here, in the UK, Black Friday and Cyber Monday may not mean a whole deal, however several US retailers do translate offers over to their UK stores/sites and many retailers and e-tailers have now begun their Christmas sales. It's perhaps, a good time to be out shopping for a bargain.
