Consumers shatter record for Black Friday online shopping

The United States saw a marked shift from brick-and-mortar to online clicks during 2023's busiest shopping day of the year. Americans shattered the record for online spending on Black Friday, according to reports released this weekend.  

Online shoppers across the United States spent an estimated $9.8 billion this Black Friday, according to a report from Adobe Analytics. This represents a 7.5% increase from Black Friday online shopping in 2022, and broke the all-time record for online shopping on the day after Thanksgiving. This figure surpassed Adobe's own prediction of $9.6 billion and was part of continued momentum from Thanksgiving Day, which saw a 5.5% increase from 2022. 

Separate data released from Salesforce, which measures different metrics than Adobe, claimed that the numbers were even higher. Salesforce reported total online sales across the country of $16.4 billion, a 9% increase from 2022. It was also reported that the vast majority of online sales, 79%, were made using mobile devices. The two companies came up with competing figures based on differences in how they track consumer data.

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Whether going by numbers from Adobe or Salesforce, the data is clear that Americans are spending more online than ever before — and this is likely to continue with Cyber Monday around the corner. In order to accommodate as many shoppers as possible, many retailers offered large online discounts on Black Friday. Both Adobe and Salesforce agreed that this will likely continue on Cyber Monday, with the latter estimating that discounts across the board will average 30%.

So while foot traffic at stores may be stagnant, Americans "exceeded any retail executive's expectations" for online shopping, Rob Garf, VP and general manager of retail at Salesforce, said in a statement, per TechCrunch. "Retailers stepped up their discounting game and shoppers, in turn, clicked the buy button."