Cyber Holidays 2013: The Early Shopping Data Show That Mobile And E-Commerce Are Taking Over

How fast are e-commerce and mobile commerce coming to define holiday shopping?

If the results of this past Thanksgiving Day weekend are any indication, 2013 will be remembered as the year when many Americans began to equate holiday shopping with e-commerce, and particularly tablet- and smartphone-based retail spending. Understanding this pattern is key to success in the increasingly "omnichannel" world of retail, in which physical and digital storefronts are fragmented across locations and devices.

In a new report, Business Insider Intelligence compiled and analyzed the best data available on how e-commerce and mobile commerce performed in the United States on the three key shopping days at the end of November: Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday. We also looked at e-commerce trends in Europe and China.

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Here are our main findings:

1. Total e-commerce grew 24% to $4.6 billion on Cyber Monday, Black Friday, and Thanksgiving, according to our estimates. Offline retail, meanwhile, was down.
2. The mobile component of e-commerce - retail purchases made on tablets and smartphones instead of PCs - grew even faster. In fact, mobile commerce grew more than twice as quickly, at 63%, and accounted for nearly $940 million in sales on those three days.
3. Amazingly, one in four e-commerce dollars spent on Black Friday and Thanksgiving were on purchases made through mobile devices.
4. We found that mobile commerce weighs more heavily on key shopping days like Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday than it does for the rest of the year.
5. Tablets have emerged as a principal engine for mobile commerce growth. For example, tablets drove twice as much consumer retail spending on Black Friday as smartphones did, according to IBM's data.
6. There were nearly 1.9 million separate e-commerce transactions completed on tablets on Cyber Monday, which added up to $237 million in mobile sales, and helped drive an impressive $2 billion in total e-commerce spending that day.

The report is full of charts and datasets that can be downloaded and put to use in your own presentations and reports.

In full, our report:

• Includes seven charts and datasets on the growth of mobile and e-commerce in the United States and internationally.
• Contrasts the growth in online retail to the stagnation in offline retail.
• Tracks the growth rate in the mobile component of e-commerce and shows how it's sure to continue rising.
• Analyzes how tablets in particular are emerging as power shopping devices, while smartphones are used more for browsing.
• Places results for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Thanksgiving in the context of our projections for how mobile and e-commerce will perform through year-end.
• Reveals how mobile-based spending varies over daypart.

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