Adobe: Online spending hits $110.6B

Dive Brief:

A record $110.6 billion was spent online between Nov. 1 and Dec. 19, a 17.8% year over year increase from $93.9 billion, according to Adobe data provided to Retail Dive via email.
Mobile transactions rose to $33.3 billion of sales, half of which came from smartphones. That represented 57% year over year growth and notched a new milestone: the first holiday season with more than half of visits (58.3%) coming from mobile.
With "Super Saturday" approaching, buy online/pickup in store orders grew by 47% year over year, making it the biggest year of BOPIS, Adobe said.

Dive Insight:

With less than a week until Christmas, retailers are hitting their e-commerce delivery deadlines and pushing BOPIS options that leverage the immediacy of buying at brick-and-mortar stores. Target, Walmart and Amazon have been locked in a heated battle to boost digital sales by slashing shipping fees, adding differentiated merchandise to their assortments and experimenting with new ways to shop the full online assortment in store.

“Weary holiday shoppers continue to look for alternatives to crowded stores, long lines and empty shelves in the final push to Christmas," Taylor Schreiner, director of Adobe Digital Insights, said in a statement. "Retailers who can offer the easiest shopping experience, whether through excellent use of data to anticipate shoppers’ needs or by providing an option for picking up products at brick-and-mortar stores, are the ones people are flocking to this week."

An estimated 134 million shoppers will turn out to shop on Super Saturday, the weekend before Christmas Day, according to separate reports from the National Retail Federation and the International Council of Shopping Centers. Roughly 44% of adults plan to shop for holiday gifts, up from 38% last year, according to the ICSC, while NRF found that 56% of shoppers will shop.

Adobe predicts that holiday sales between Nov. 1 and Dec. 31 will reach $126 billion. The firm based its analysis on more than 1 trillion visits to retail sites and 55 million SKUs, measuring transactions from 80 of the top 100 U.S. online retailers, according to the release.