Cyber Monday clocks record sales as mobile sales surge

NEW YORK — Quick thumbs tapping across mobile keyboards helped make Cyber Monday the largest U.S. online sales day ever.

The latest data show significantly more people are comfortable not only browsing, but buying products on their smartphones, fundamentally changing the way retailers clock sales during the busiest shopping period of the year.

Mobile traffic accounted for nearly half of all online traffic and 27.6% of all online sales Monday, which is up more than 25% from last year, according to IBM Watson Trend, which tracks millions of transactions on retail websites. Online sales increased 17.8% Monday compared to the same day in 2014, IBM says. Consumers made bigger-ticket purchases on desktop, though, with an average order value of $128 vs. about $102 on smartphones

Another report shows Cyber Monday sales topped $3 billion, up 16% from last year, according to Adobe data, which is based on 200 million visits to 4,500 retail sites.

Many retailers made a more deliberate effort this year to put online and in-store deals on equal footing, such as making Cyber Monday deals available early, rolling them out over the weekend as shoppers were still in a Black Friday buying frenzy. Some Black Friday deals were available online hours before retailers made them available in stores last week.

Mobile apps also played a bigger role , such as the expansion of Target's partnership with the app Curbside, which allows customers to place an order and pick it up at a Target store without leaving their car.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2015/12/01/cyber-monday-sales-results/76602534/