IBM: Cyber Monday online sales up 8.5%, iOS numbers more than quadruple Android’s

Cyber Monday, the day meant to encourage even more buying in the wake of the U.S. Thanksgiving weekend, remained the busiest day this year for online shopping over the five-day period. Online sales grew by 8.5 percent over 2013, according to the latest figures from IBM.

Mobile traffic accounted for 41.2 percent of all online traffic, up 30.1 percent over 2013. Furthermore, these visitors weren’t just browsing: Mobile sales reached 22 percent of total Cyber Monday online sales, an increase of 27.6 percent year-over-year.

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As always in the U.S., iOS beat out Android in mobile shopping this holiday season. iOS users averaged $114.79 per order compared to $96.84 for Android users, a difference of 18.5 percent.

iOS traffic accounted for 28.7 percent of total online traffic, more than double that of Android, which drove 12.2 percent of all online traffic. More importantly, iOS sales accounted for 17.4 percent of total online sales, more than four times that of Android, which drove 4.4 percent of all online sales.

The discrepancy between Android and iOS for these numbers can often be attributed to the fact that the latter has a larger market share in the U.S. Yet that doesn’t explain why the difference is even larger for sales than for traffic. The reason may come down to smartphones versus tablets and the fact that iPads are even more popular than Android tablets in the U.S. when compared to iPhones being more popular than Android smartphones.

IBM found smartphones drove 28.5 percent of all Cyber Monday online traffic, more than double that of tablets, which accounted for 12.5 percent of all traffic. That said, tablets drove 12.9 percent of online sales compared to 9.1 percent for smartphones, a difference of 41.5 percent. Tablet users also averaged $121.49 per order compared to $99.61 for smartphone users, a difference of 22 percent.

All of this comes down to a big reminder that the desktop is far from dead. PCs accounted for 58.6 percent of all online traffic and 78 percent of all online sales. Consumers also spent more while shopping on their PCs, with an average order value of $128.24 compared to $110.72 for mobile shoppers, a difference of 15.8 percent.

IBM offered three other interesting findings:

• New York City again claimed the top spot for Cyber Monday sales, followed by Washington, D.C.; Atlanta, GA; Los Angeles, CA; and Chicago, IL.
• Emails that are automatically triggered by a consumer’s action, like a purchase receipt or cart abandonment, increased 48 percent year-over-year. The median number of emails sent to consumers from retailers on Cyber Monday was two, remaining the same in 2014 compared to 2013. Open and clickthrough rates on Cyber Monday were 12.8 percent and 2.2 percent, respectively. More than 46 percent of Cyber Monday emails were opened on mobile devices or tablets, versus 52 percent on desktops.
• Pinterest referrals drove an average of $97.78 per order compared to $123.44 for Facebook, a difference of 26.2 percent.

IBM’s data comes from its real-time Digital Analytics Benchmark, which tracks approximately 800 U.S. retail websites. All the above figures are for all of Cyber Monday; previous estimates were based on incomplete figures as the day wasn’t over yet (though it’s worth noting Adobe saw a bigger jump than IBM).

In related news, Walmart today announced that Cyber Monday 2014 was the biggest online day in its history for orders. The retailer also revealed that mobile accounted for approximately 70 percent of traffic to its website between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday.

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Overall, Cyber Monday 2014 appears to have been a success, although its growth was not as large as in previous years. This may be down to the fact that Thanksgiving and Black Friday are eating away at Cyber Monday as retailers increasingly offer not just in-store deals on those days but online ones as well.