Black Friday stampede goes online

Instead of standing in line for hours for Black Friday retail deals, many shoppers stayed home and went online in this pandemic-pressured year.

Adobe Analytics expects Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2020 to be the two largest online sales days ever in the US. Online sales hit $9 billion on the day after Thanksgiving, up more than 21 percent over last year, according to Adobe Analytics, which analyzes website transactions from 80 of the top 100 US online retailers.

It was the first time that web shoppers outspent in-person gift-seekers on Black Friday, making it the second-largest online spending day in US history, behind last year's Cyber Monday.

That record is likely to be broken on Cyber Monday－the Monday after Thanksgiving－with spending estimated to be between $10.8 billion and $12.7 billion, around 35 percent more than last year.

US consumers made $3.6 billion in purchases through their smartphones, a 25 percent increase over last year, making up 40 percent of total online spending. Curbside pickup of merchandise increased 52 percent, according to Adobe.

Black Friday looked a bit different this year, due to the pandemic.

Many stores skipped the traditional opening on Thanksgiving night, instead offering some of their best sales online for the past couple of weeks. The changes were made to help prevent shoppers from milling inside stores, potentially spreading the coronavirus.

Practical purchases

"New consoles, phones, smart devices and TVs that are traditional Black Friday purchases are sharing online shopping cart space this year with unorthodox Black Friday purchases such as groceries, clothes and alcohol that would previously have been purchased in-store," Taylor Schreiner, a director at Adobe Digital Insights, said in a statement.

Thanksgiving Day itself also was busy online, said Kristin McGrath, an online shopping expert at Ziff Media Group and editor at Black-Friday.com, the New York Post reported.

"Even in past years, we've seen a lot of online shopping on Thanksgiving," she said. "This year we saw even more."

Gaming consoles, televisions, kitchen equipment, smart speakers and office gear like laptops and printers were on the Christmas lists for families staying at home more this winter, the Post reported.

With millions more working from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the prospects for online retailers to cash in have grown exponentially.

Meanwhile, the number of shoppers who ventured into retail stores on Black Friday dropped 52 percent, said Sensormatic Solutions. Foot traffic was down 45.2 percent for the week compared with last year.

On Nov 19, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention deemed "going shopping in crowded stores just before, on, or after Thanksgiving" as a high-risk activity.

The National Retail Federation predicted online sales would grow at least 30 percent for the season, to $218.4 billion. It forecasts overall US holiday retail sales will increase between 3.6 percent and 5.2 percent over 2019－from $755.3 billion to $766.7 billion.

Reuters contributed to this story.