Online Black Friday sales rose 19% for record day

Mobile saw big gains, accounting 40% of online traffic and 22% of online sales

As was expected, this year's Black Friday was a record setting day for online shopping. 

After a Thanksgiving Day that saw sales rise 19.7%, Black Friday nearly matched it, with an increase of 18.9% for a record setting day, according to data from IBM on Saturday. 

While IBM did not give a specific dollar number for how much was spent in total on Black Friday, it did reveal that the average order for was $135.27, an increase of 2.2% year-to-year.

Even more impressive, were the mobile numbers.

Mobile traffic grew to 39.7% of all online traffic, an increase of 34% over last year's Black Friday 2012. And smartphones were the leading driver of that. They accounted for 24.9% of all online traffic, compared to 14.2% on tablets.

Mobile sales reached 21.8% of total online sales, an increase of almost 43% year-over-year, and that was driven by tablets. Tablets were responsible for 14.4% of all online sales, compared to 7.2% on smartphones.

Also, tablet owners spent more: $132.75 per order, compared to $115.63. That is a difference of 15%. 

When broken down by operating system, iOS ruled the day. Its users spent $127.92 per order, and iOS accounted for $28.2% of online traffic and 18.1% of online sales. Android, meanwhile, had 11.4% of traffic, only 3.5% of sales and its users spent $105.20 per order. 

In terms of social media, Pinterest blew Facebook out of the water. Shoppers who were referred from Pinterest spent 77% more than those referred from Facebook, $92.51 to $52.30. The consolation for Facebook is that its referrals converted sales at four times the rate of Pinterest. It will be interesting to see if Pinterest can narrow that gap in years to come.

While this year's Black Friday may have been the biggest ever, it saw a much lower increase than last year, when sales increased 26% year to year to break $1 billion on Black Friday for the first time ever.

IBM also singled out the four biggest sectors for Black Friday shopping.

• Online sales for department stores went up 61.4%, with the percentage of mobile sales rising 46.4% year to year. Average order value was $146.84, an increase of 15% from 2012.
• Health and beauty sales increased 28%, with mobile going up 65%. The average order was $66.31, a 3.2% increase.
• Sales of home goods were 16.8% higher than 2012, and mobile sales grew 24%. With average order increased 15% to $207.80.
• Apparel saw its sales grow 50.4%, and mobile percentage grow 43%. Average orders increased 3.5% to $123.31.

With numbers like these, you'd think we'd all having buying fatigue by now, but the season is not over yet. We still have the big day to deal with: Cyber Monday.

Adobe is predicting that shopping on the first Monday following Thanksgiving will increase by 15% year year, for to a total of a whopping $2.27 billion spent.

Last year's Cyber Monday was the biggest shopping day of all time and Cyber Monday 2010 was the first time that people spent more than $1 billion in a single shopping day.

(Image source: https://www.forbes.com(