comScore is reporting that U.S. retail e-commerce sales on Black Friday (Friday, November 26th) were up 9% over last year’s Black Friday sales figures. For the season-to-date, online sales are up 13%, totaling $11.64 billion so far.
According to comScore’s numbers, Black Friday sales this year were at $648 million, up from $595 million last year and sales in the season as a whole are up $1.322 billion over last year at this time. Sales on Thanksgiving Day were way up, 28% higher than last year at $407 million.
Retailers have been wary this year after being heavily disappointed last year when holiday sales failed to bring them out of the serious slump the economy had thrown them in during 2008-09. Despite politicians claiming that the “recession is over.”
The National Retail Federation reports a bigger shopping weekend this past Thanksgiving weekend than last year, with about 6% more money being spent for the weekend. So the gains aren’t just for the online markets.
Back to comScore, the numbers show that search patterns and user behavior was heavily influenced by Friday-only deals offered by several online merchants. Black Friday-specific sites, like Black-Friday.net, lead the pack in huge, one-day traffic bursts and sales. Three sites analyzed (all with “Black Friday” in their names) netted more than 6 million visitors in total – all in one day.
Amazon, of all the retail sites analyzed by comScore, however, came out on top. As it did last year. The other three top sites were all brick-and-mortar online branches: Walmart, Target, and Best Buy.
Great news for the retail market and hopefully good news for the economy as well.
