Thanksgiving weekend has long been considered the traditional start of the most important sales period for retailers, and so far all indications are that we’re in for a strong holiday season for e-commerce. Salesforce follows activity in real time and has just published its first figures of the day. It says that as of 2 p.m. ET, online sales were up 7% globally and 4% in the US compared to 2023, respectively generating $15.6 billion and $3.1 billion in sales.
For comparison, Thanksgiving last year was slow when it came to online shopping. Salesforce said that throughout the day it had online sales of $31.7 billion and that in the United States it had sales of $7.5 billion. Each rose only 1%.
Salesforce said its 2024 figures are based on purchasing data from 1.5 billion consumers that is captured across its customers and other data sources in Commerce Cloud, Marketing Cloud and Service Cloud. You can see more here.
We’ll update this post later with more figures, including figures from Adobe, which also tracks online sales. Last year Adobe Analytics saying that people in the US on Thanksgiving Day spent $5.6 billion online, an estimated increase of only 5.5% from the previous year.
In fact, the economy continues to falter in multiple markets, so retailers are sweetening the deal to get shoppers to part with their money. Discounts average 24% globally and 27% in the US.
Thanksgiving Day has become a key day for mobile shopping in the United States. Most brick-and-mortar stores are closed and many people are out with friends and family, so people are reaching for their phones as a more subtle way to get their hands on sale items.
Salesforce predicts that the busiest shopping period will be in the evening, after the banquet, and that 35% of all sales will occur between 7:00 p.m. and midnight. It also predicts that Thanksgiving will be the biggest mobile shopping day of the week overall, with 73% of all sales made today expected to be on mobile devices.
The Internet has created a huge spread when it comes to Christmas shopping. Black Friday used to be a uniquely American shopping phenomenon, occurring the day immediately after Thanksgiving and kicking off the holiday shopping season.
Now, not only can “Black Friday” sales events be found around the world (where Thanksgiving does not exist except in American television special syndications), but those and other holiday sales days have began to be packaged as “Cyber Week.” , which starts days before you carve the turkey or make the pumpkin pie.
Salesforce counted Tuesday this week as the start of Cyber Week and said sales were up 7% and 14% respectively globally and in the United States.
Sometimes it seems like we’ve hit a pause in innovation when it comes to e-commerce, but generative AI might have something to say about that. Salesforce said retailers’ use of digital agents and GenAI increased 32% compared to a week ago.
Salesforce obviously sees a business opportunity in building these AI bells and whistles, so that might be why they’re unraveling those particular details. “A 32% increase” doesn’t tell us how many actually have AI tools, let alone how helpful they have been in sales conversions, or whether they have led to people leaving sites out of frustration. It remains to be seen if more specific statistics materialize this year.
“Holiday shopping momentum is picking up throughout Cyber Week with online traffic and sales on the rise. After waiting all year for the best deals of the season, shoppers are finally ready to do their holiday shopping and are flocking to their favorite sites on their mobile devices,” said Caila Schwartz, director of Consumer Insights at Salesforce, in a statement.