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Cyber Monday sales up 33%, new sales records set, IBM says

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Cyber Monday deals lured a record number of online shoppers, leading to a 33% jump in U.S. sales compared with the Monday after Thanksgiving last year, according to a new IBM report released Tuesday.

Consumers spent an average of 2.6% more this year than they did in 2010, with the value of an average online order rising from $193.24 to a record $198.26 this year, according to IBM’s fourth annual Cyber Monday Benchmark study.

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Also increasing this year was the number of shoppers who made purchases on their smartphones and tablets, the study said. On Cyber Monday, a record 10.8% of people used a mobile device to visit a retailer’s site, up from 3.9% in 2010. Mobile sales also grew to 6.6% on this year’s Cyber Monday purchases, up from 2.3% a year earlier, the tech giant said.

‘Consumers flocked online, with shopping momentum hitting its highest peak at 11:05am PST/2:05pm EST,’ IBM said in a statement. ‘Consumer shopping also maintained strong momentum after commuting hours on both the East and West coast.’

Two statistics not included in IBM’s study was an estimate of how much in total was spent or exactly how many people were shopping on Cyber Monday. IBM produces its Cyber Monday shopping report by ‘analyzing terabytes of raw data from 500 retailers nationwide,’ the company said.

And, as a tech firm that sells software, tech infrastructure and consulting services to businesses, IBM’s analysis of this data is a bit of a marketing opportunity for the company founded in 1911.

‘Retailers that adopted a smarter approach to commerce, one that allowed them to swiftly adjust to the shifting shopping habits of their customers, whether in-store, online or via their mobile device, were able to fully benefit from this day and the entire holiday weekend,’ said John Squire, the chief strategy officer of IBM’s ‘Smarter Commerce’ team, in a statement.

So, how did Cyber Monday compare with Black Friday, the Friday after Thanksgiving? IBM has some data on that too, reporting that it found Cyber Monday brought in 29.3% more online sales than Black Friday did (though many shoppers on Black Friday were in brick-and-mortar stores and not online).

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According to a few other Black Friday reports, that day was a shopping sales record too.

Most people who purchased items online on Cyber Monday and Black Friday did so using Apple’s i-devices, which ‘continued to rank one and two for mobile device retail traffic’ with 4.1% of shopper Web-surfing taking place on the iPhone and 3.3% on the iPad, IBM said.

Android came in third with a solid 3.2% of Cyber Monday and Black Friday Web traffic, the report said.

‘Shoppers using the iPad also continued to drive more retail purchases than any other device with conversion rates reaching 5.2 percent compared to 4.6 percent,’ on other devices, IBM said.

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-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles

Twitter.com/nateog

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