The Data Is In: Mobile Tops In Online’s $83B Holiday

According to data released Tuesday (Jan. 19) from Adobe Digital Index (ADI), the 2015 holiday season saw consumers spending nearly $83 billion online, a 12.7 percent increase over what was spent during the same time in 2014.

“We originally predicted 11 percent growth year over year. What we found is that, throughout most of the season, growth was actually slightly lower than 11 percent,” ADI Analyst Tyler White told CMO.com. “It wasn’t until the very end of the season that we saw a significant surge in sales, which drove the 12.7 percent year-over-year growth. Phone traffic exceeding desktop traffic some days was one of the drivers of that growth.”

ADI confirmed that the week before Christmas took the title for maintaining the biggest growth year over year in online sales.

But the real star of the show was mobile. During last year’s holiday season, 39 percent of overall digital traffic was driven by smartphones, and nearly 17 percent of sales came from the devices as well.

ADI’s 2015 Holiday Shopping Report concluded that services like “buy online, pick up in-store” were also big drivers for growth. The pick up in-store feature helped to alleviate the concern many shoppers typically have about whether shipped merchandise will arrive in time for the holidays.

“During the last couple of years, there was a lot of talk about retailers trying to spread out the holiday season,” White explained. “This year, they really weren’t able to get the buying started that much earlier, but they were able to keep it going longer into the Christmas week.”