New Forecast for U.S. Online Holiday Sales Expects Jump to Over $100 Billion

Adobe released their forecast for this year’s U.S. Holiday season, and it includes some staggering numbers. Based on data from the Adobe Analytics product, the company expects online retail sales to reach $107.4 Billion, which is a 13.8 percent increase!

Cyber Monday is anticipated to become the largest online shopping day in history with $6.6 Billion in sales, a 16.5 percent increase over last year (YoY).

Even sales on Thanksgiving Day look extremely strong with an estimate of $2.8 Billion, a 15 percent YoY increase.

Adobe estimates that one out of every six Dollars this holiday season will be spent between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday.

“This year’s record-breaking online holiday shopping season is built on the strength of the big players. We predict the biggest retailers with wide selections, easy shopping experiences, and free shipping, to drive online holiday growth this year.

Still, there is opportunity for savvy small retailers to win, specifically with mobile experiences.

As revenue growth plateaus, retailers will be competing hard for customers by offering steep discounts and providing a seamless customer journey.”

Mickey Mericle, vice president, Marketing and Insights at Adobe

Differences Between Large and Small Retailers

While we may have talked up a lot of improvements by large retailers on their mobile apps, the company estimates that smaller retailers will have a much higher conversion on mobile commerce.

Retailers with $10 million or less in revenues are expected to have a mobile conversion rate around 1.9 percent.

In a recent article, we stated a figure from BigCommerce that claimed the typical mobile conversion rate to be around 1.5 percent for all retailers.

This estimated higher conversion rate for mobile is good news for small business online retailers.

Adobe did not specify why they believe it is higher for smaller retailers. Presumably, small retailers have more product focus, and if a shopper went through the process of finding a specialty store, they are probably more likely to buy from that store.

As a smaller online retailer, you may want to make sure you have good descriptions and offer the most variety in digital wallet checkout. Both of these points should increase your conversion rate, and if you believe in Adobe’s forecast, that is your advantage!

Lower Priced Items will Continue to Rule Sales

In 2016, Toys and Apparel saw a 39 percent and 20 percent growth respectively in holiday season sales. Jewelry came in on the bottom and even had a 3 percent decline in unit sales.

Adobe expects these trends to continue for 2017, which means you need to highlight and market lower priced items over more expensive products.

Afterall, it is about growing revenues and if the lower tiers are doing better, then go with the low hanging fruit.

Some More Fun Findings

• Most desired electronics this holiday season include Apple Air Pods, Sony PlayStation® VR and home assistants such as Amazon Echo and Google Home
• Nostalgia is still a big seller in toys and video games, as Hasbro NERF Guns, Nintendo Switch and Super Mario Odyssey should top the list
• Black Friday is expected to have the sharpest discounts with televisions (23.7 percent), tablets (23.6 percent), jewelry (12 percent) and appliances (17.7 percent)
• Thanksgiving Day is a good day for deals in computers (16 percent), sporting goods (11 percent), apparel (15 percent) and video games/consoles (9.6 percent)
• Toys should top the list of discounts (19.1 percent) on Cyber Monday
• And Christmas Decor biggest discount day is predicted to be the Wednesday before Thanksgiving with an estimated average discount of 22.7 percent

Ready, Set, Go!

There is precious little time left to get ready. Amazon and eBay already shot out of the gate on November 1st, so any time lost now is time lost making sales!

Adobe predicts mobile to be stronger than desktop for the first time in a holiday season. We have often talked about the growth of eCommerce on mobile in our posts, so that should not be a surprise.

Is your store and marketing strategy ready for the holiday season?

If not yet, it’s Go TIME!

Drop us a line in the comments section on how ready you are in your business.

Richard Meldner

Richard is co-founder of eSeller365. He has over 17 years of experience on eBay which includes tens of thousands of sales to buyers in over 100 countries and even has experience with eBay’s VeRO program enforcing intellectual property rights for a former employer. And for about two years Richard sold products on Amazon using Amazon FBA in the US.

To “relax” from the daily business grind, for a few weekends a year, he also works for IMSA as a professional race official.