Black Friday sales up 7%, mobile up 36% — and iPhone driving 450% more sales than Android

Retailers are giving thanks today as not only were Thanksgiving sales up more than 10 percent yesterday but Black Friday sales are also up at least 7 percent today.

Mobile traffic accounted for 37 percent of all online traffic, according to IBM’s Digital Analytics Benchmark, which is a 36 percent increase from last year. As per usual, iOS mobile traffic was much more valuable than Android, driving 450 percent the sales and more than double the visits of smartphones and tablets running Google’s mobile operating system.

iOS average order volume was also higher: $131.52 to $113.13.

Smartphones browse and tablets buy, IBM said, as smartphones drove double the traffic of tablets (24 percent to 12 percent of all online traffic), but tablets were responsible for 13.2 percent of all online sales, compared to just 8.2 percent for smartphones. Clearly, we’re still showrooming — checking out sales on the go while in a store, ensuring that we’re not getting a bad deal.

Interestingly, in social commerce while Pinterest referrals drive average order volume of $103.30 and Facebook drives AOV of $93.73, Facebook referrals converted into actual sales “at a rate more than twice that of Pinterest referrals.”

IBM speculates that the reason is a closer tie to the recommendations of our friends on Facebook having a greater influence on us than a more random view on Pinterest.