Online and Mobile Sales Records Fall with 2019 Thanksgiving and Black Friday

It looks like lots of people went shopping after eating their turkey and according to Techcrunch, the trend of not setting for in a brick and mortar store helped to drive overall sales:

Following swiftly on the heels of a Thanksgiving that broke records with $4.2 billion in online sales, Black Friday also hit a new high, although it just fell short of predictions. According to analytics from Adobe, consumers spent $7.4 billion online yesterday buying goods online via computers, tablets and smartphones. The figures were up by $1.2 billion on Black Friday 2018, but they actually fell short of Adobe’s prediction for the day, which was $7.5 billion. 

And it wasn't like they were just going online at home either:

A full $2.9 billion of Black Friday sales happened on smartphones. These conversions are growing faster than online shopping overall, so we are now approaching a tipping point where soon smartphones might outweigh web-based purchases through computers.

But the trend of smartphones shows that even when people do make their way to the stores, they've already done some work online and on mobile:

“Even when shoppers went to stores, they were now buying nearly 41% more online before going to the store to pick up. As such, mobile represents a growing opportunity for smaller businesses to extend the support they see from consumers buying locally in-store on Small Business Saturday to the rest of the holiday season. Small Business Saturday will accelerate sales for those retailers who can offer unique products or services that the retail giants can’t provide.”

Will small businesses capitalize on teh opportunites this presents? We'll have to look at the data in a few weeks and month to see, but clearly there is a chance for success if they are willing to take advantage.