The companies’ sales have risen on Cyber Monday – the online equivalent of Black Friday – this year compared to 2013, but the proportion of the rise was various at different companies. IBM reports the sales have risen only 8.5% during this year’s online shopping event, while Adobe has different – higher – numbers under its sleeve, Cnet reports.
IBM’s Digital Analytics Benchmark says that the average buyer spent $124 online during this Cyber Monday, down 3.5% compared to last year. According to the data, shoppers bought 4.1 items per order this year on average, growing 3.1% compared to 2013. 22% of all orders were registered through mobile, growing 27.6% compared to last year. The 8.5% growth of online sales is not bad at all, but it’s below the expectations – IBM says retailers are to blame for this, offering online deals weeks before the actual Black Friday / Cyber Monday, which have determined online shoppers to start their holiday shopping earlier than usual.
The 2014 Digital Index Online Shopping report inked by Adobe Systems has a somewhat different set of data, it seems, as it reports the total sales growing by 16% compared to 2013. The top 25 online retailers in the US (each with sales of $30 million or more) have sold merchandise worth $1.8 billion during Cyber Monday, a growth of 25% over the results of last year. Smaller retailers (with sales of up to $2 million) have seen their sales grow by only 5% this year compared to the last. The total sales during this Cyber Monday have grown by 16%, Adobe says.
So, what’s the difference between the two analytics that makes them reach such different results? Well, IBM’s Digital Analytics Benchmark tracks the transactions of approximately 800 of the largest US retail websites, while Adobe’s index includes information from over 4,500. The actual results reported by the two analytics are different, but the trend they suggest is the same nonetheless: Cyber Monday remains the largest online shopping day of the year, with the sales growing year after year, and mobile orders taking up an increasingly large share of the total.