Black Friday Online Sales Up 9 Percent, Reaching Record $648 Million
By Anna Johnson on November 28th, 2010Online sales reached $648 million in the United States on Black Friday – November 26, 2010, the day after the Thanksgiving Day national holiday. According to comScore data, this is 9 percent higher than Black Friday in 2009 and also represents the heaviest day in online sales so far this year.
Black Friday is traditionally a big sales day for off-line retail stores, with Cyber Monday (the Monday following Thanksgiving) expected to be the big sales day for Internet retailers. The record in online sales on Black Friday either indicates that online retailers are increasingly targeting Friday for big sales… or may indicate an even bigger online spending day to come on Monday November 29, 2010.
Another reason for the huge amount of online activity is that consumers are increasingly using the Internet to research purchases of all kinds – off-line and online. Perhaps a large contingent of people looking for price and product information about the impending Black Friday sales in traditional retail stores found better bargains online and decided to buy on the Internet after all.
Amazon was a major winner on Black Friday with a 25 percent increase in visitors to the site on the day and, presumably, a similar increase in sales. Amazon’s closest rivals lagged behind, with Walmart seeing a 1 percent decline in online traffic, Target increasing by 9 percent and Best Buy increasing by 1 percent. To be fair, a lot of these other companies’ customers may well have opted to visit their bricks and mortar outlets rather than go online.
