Infographic: How big was the jump in online and mobile commerce for Black Friday?

IBM generated an interesting infographic representing how big the jump in online shopping activity was on Black Friday. Using its own analytic service, Smarter Commerce, to track the data, IBM determined that online spending increased nearly 21% from a year ago. Also, one-quarter of online customers used a mobile device to access shopping sites which is a huge jump from only 14% in 2011. Mobile sales totaled over 16% of online orders, representing an impressive increase from just 9.8% last year.

Of the mobile devices used, Apple’s iPad was the tool of choice for accessing online shopping resources. In fact, the iPad accounted for a full 10% of all online shopping transactions, representing more than any other mobile device, tablet or smartphone. The iPhone clocked 8.7% and Android had 5.5%. Despite the increase in activity, the average amount of an online order was down nearly 5% as did the average number of items per order which decreased 12% from 2011.

What will come as no surprise to our readership is that consumers used their computers and mobile devices simultaneously to hunt down the best deals. 58% of consumers used smartphones to aid in shopping efforts. A result of all the bargain hunting was an actual drop in the average order, down nearly 5% and the average number of items per order dropped as well nearly 12%.

Despite the average overall value of orders decreasing, it is more than offset by the huge increase in overall online activity as technology is more and more accessible. This data from IBM only reinforces what we learned about eBay’s and PayPal’s activity this past Thanksgiving holiday as well.  

Which part of the online shopping pie were you?

sources: IBM