Online spending saw strong growth over the holiday shopping season in 2020. Here’s a closer look at the numbers, including a peek at how small sellers fared compared to large, and a look at growth rates of popular product categories.
The 2020 holiday shopping season saw average daily online revenue exceed $3.1 billion, up from $2.3 billion last year – that’s a 32% increase for online sellers. And for the first time ever, every day of the holiday shopping season exceeded $1 billion in online sales.
Adobe Analytics will publish its 2020 Holiday Recap report on Tuesday and shared a sneak peek with EcommerceBytes readers.
Sellers big and small benefitted from the record-breaking growth. The report found that small retailers with revenue of between $10 – $50 million saw a bump in online sales early on in the pandemic. That edge dissipated during the holiday season as large retailers (over $1 billion in revenue) increased their efforts on attracting customers.
The report also showed, however, that the difference in boosts for the 2020 holiday season was much closer at 110% for large vs. 104% for small retailers, compared to 2019, at 107% for large and 84% for small.
November and December saw US online spend totaling $188.2 billion.
Smartphones accounted for 40% of the holiday season’s ecommerce growth. And for the first time ever, over half of online spend came from smartphones on Christmas Day (52%).
Adobe Analytics also reported product category “winners and losers” throughout the holiday season compared to 2019:
- Grocery: 404%
- Appliances: 202%
- Books at 107%
- Toys: 50%
- Jewelry 66%
Taylor Schreiner, Director of Adobe Digital Insights, said, “With online shopping already heightened coming into the season due to early discounting and improved mobile shopping experiences, we saw revenue levels increase over Thanksgiving week and give way for record-breaking Black Friday and Cyber Monday at $9B and $10.8B respectively.”
As for sales in the New Year, Schreiner said, “Now, as COVID-19 cases continue to rise and more stringent lock-down measures return, online spending is expected to stay elevated, at least for the early part of 2021.”
Adobe has been covering the 2020 holiday online-shopping season on this page of the Adobe website, and stay tuned for its full 2020 holiday shopping recap to be released on Tuesday.
