A friend of The Skinny could be seen sitting at the computer or using his smartphone in suburban Wilmington on and off all day on Thanksgiving. But he wasn’t streaming football.

(Tell the truth, now: Didn’t YOU do the same thing between bites of turkey and sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie? Did you get in trouble?)

He was perusing for bargains – and finding them ahead of Black Friday mayhem.

This gent was hardly alone as ecommerce services provider founder ChannelAdvisor’s Scot Wingo reports: Turkey Day is now a huge shopping day.

Yes, Black Friday sales set more records – and look for “Cyber Monday” today to be huge as well.

Yes, brick-and-mortar sales took a tumble as The Wall Street Journal and other sources are reporting.

But what strikes The Skinny as the biggest news are two factors:

  • One: The surge of Thanksgiving day buying.
  • Two: The remarkable jump in the use of mobile devices for shopping. (According to website Custora, 36.1% of online sales were placed on mobile (phones + tablets), up from 30.3% on Black Friday 2014 )

As Wingo, one of the pioneers in developing ecommerce and whose company does business with many of the world’s top retailers, noted: Mobile traffic skyrocketed to more than 60 percent of all traffic.

Most importantly tor etailers, orders soared to more than 40 percent of the pie.

(If your site isn’t mobile friendly, it had better be soon if you expect to stay in business.)

Who is afraid of the Grinch who steals consumer IDs and charge card information?

Look at these highlights as posted by Wingo in his ChannelAdvisor blog:

  • Smartphone: On Thanksgiving, we saw smartphone traffic at 52% and that trend slowed on Black Friday which came in at 49%. Conversion rates for smartphones improved slightly from 2.16% to 2.21%.
  • Tablet: Tablet trends held steady on Thanksgiving and Black Friday. At about 12% traffic and orders and a ~4% conversion rate.
  • Mobile: Mobile – Smartphone+Tablet and came in at 61-64% for total traffic and 40-46% of orders for Thanksgiving and Black Friday.
  • Computer: Computer traffic increased from 36% to 39% from Thanksgiving to Black Friday. and orders increased 54% to 60% because conversion rates increased 5.33% to 5.96%.

Overall, Wingo noted that “Thanksgiving definitely was the fastest growing day of the Cyber Five thus far and indicates that consumers moved up their online shopping (and buying) this year.”

Let’s not forget Black Friday, which grows ever bigger as the source for shoppers who don’t want to fight mall traffic and who are growing smarter about finding more bargains at websites.

Inside the numbers

Wingo’s Black Friday insights include:

  • Total – e-commerce is set to grow 15% y/y (comScore) and on Black Friday saw 20.3% y/y on a SSS basis, much faster than the e-commerce trend, but a bit slower than Thanksgiving’s 43% y/y growth. This data indicates that Black Friday 2015 is in-line with 2014.  Thanksgiving definitely was the fastest growing day of the Cyber Five thus far and indicates that consumers moved up their online shopping (and buying) this year.
  • Amazon – Amazon is outperforming the 15% benchmark coming in at 20.8%.
  • eBay – eBay increased 1.5% y/y for Black Friday. eBay took a bit of an unusual Black Friday strategy focusing on collectibles and precious metals, perhaps in an attempt to differentiate from the normal Black Friday TV, electronics and toys deals.
  • CSE – CSEs were up 6% y/y, driven by Google Shopping/PLA.
  • GS – Google  Shopping/PLA was the only e-commerce channel that accelerated from Thanksgiving to Black Friday at 40.3% y/y, up from Thanksgiving’s 35.9%.  This indicates that consumers are utilizing Google Shopping/PLA to discover the best prices on items they are looking for.
  • Search – Search (adWords) decreased 7.4% y/y, largely due to cannibalization from Google Shopping/PLA on the Google search results page.
  • Other 3PM – Other Third Party Marketplaces continued the trend from Thanksgiving and on Black Friday came in at 76.6%, another very strong showing that is more than 5X the rate of e-commerce.

Wingo’s not alone

Another website, Custora, reported similar news about sales.

Highlights;

  • Strong growth: E-Commerce revenue was up 16.1% over Black Friday 2014
  • Orders grew 15.6% over Black Friday 2014
  • 36.1% of online sales were placed on mobile (phones + tablets), up from 30.3% on Black Friday 2014
  • Email marketing was the primary channel driving online sales, accounting for 25.1% of transactions
  • 77.6% of all orders made on mobile devices happened on Apple devices, while only 22.1%happened on Android devices
  • Social media (Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest, etc.) only drove 1.7% of sales

Read more from Scot at:

http://www.channeladvisor.com/blog/?pn=scot/holiday-2015-sss-black-friday-final-results