$221 billion adds up to a record online holiday season

Consumers spent $220.1 billion online throughout the recent holiday season, up $10.4 billion on the previous 12 months, a growth of virtually 5%. That’s an all-time record, as measured by Adobe Analytics (based on over one trillion visits to U.S. retail sites). Buy Now Pay Later transactions also broke records. Another driver was major discounting by retailers.

For the primary time, mobile shopping nosed ahead of desktop, driving just over 50% of sales.

Why we care. That recession never happened, no less than not in 2023. Consumers could have struggled with gas prices, the associated fee of some food items and (as all the time) the associated fee of housing over the course of the 12 months, but come holiday time those purse strings were loosened.

At least that’s one possible takeaway. It’s also value considering (although Adobe’s data doesn’t address it) that a part of the rise was driven by traditional offline transactions now being conducted online. And it’s not a distant step to speculate that the experience of mandatory online purchases throughout the lockdown is perhaps a driver there (groceries accounted for over $19 billion of the spend).

Dig deeper: Consumers look to use AI for holiday shopping

Breaking down the discounts. Electronics rang the bell for discounts peaking at over 30% of list price. Toys and apparel weren’t far behind. As much as 65% of the record holiday spending was driven by those three categories, plus furniture and groceries.

The fruitful channels. Paid search was again the most important driver of sales for retailers (29.4% of online sales). That was followed by web traffic (19.3%), affiliate and partner sales (16.6%), organic search (15.9%), and email (15.3%).