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Black Friday may be typically associated with shoppers heading into stores, but this year consumers relied on online shopping in a big way.
Online sales on Black Friday rose 7% YoY to hit $17.5 billion in the US, Salesforce data showed. Global sales grew at a slower pace at 5% YoY to $74.4 billion.
Salesforce tracks more than 1.5 billion consumers across Commerce Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and Service Cloud, which power the backend of retail websites like Saks, L’Oréal, Yeti, and Decathlon.
Separately, Shopify, the tech company that builds e-commerce stores, helped its merchants crush it this holiday season. Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke took to X to report $5 billion in online sales on Black Friday globally and that peak sales per minute on that day were $4.6 million.
The tech giant did not share a number for sales in the US. But, it said, top selling categories of items in the US on Nov. 29 included T-shirts, skin care, vitamins and supplements, makeup, and hoodies. The average cart price in the US was $154.26, Shopify said.
“With $5 billion in sales, one thing is clear: consumers are continuing to buy from their favorite brands, and those brands are all powered by Shopify,” Shopify President Harley Finkelstein wrote in an email.
Meanwhile, newer entrant TikTok Shop, drove more than $100 million in US sales on Black Friday. The top-selling categories on TikTok Shop were home, fashion, and beauty and top-selling brands included Canvas Beauty, Tarte Cosmetics, and Miniso, the company said.
Stormi Steele, founder and CEO of Canvas Beauty, a top seller of hair care and beauty products on TikTok Shop, surpassed $2 million in sales, in one livestream on Black Friday.
While shoppers lined up on the internet to cash in on Black Friday deals, discount rates dropped 3% YoY to 27% average discount rate globally and 3% YoY to 28% in the US, per Salesforce data.
“Just as we predicted, bargain hunters held out for Black Friday to snag those big-ticket items,” Caila Schwartz, director of consumer insights at Salesforce, said in an emailed comment. “Our data revealed that luxury handbags and home appliances—categories with heftier price tags—were the stars of the show, even with modest discounts.”
A successful holiday season is underway for e-commerce, and this is just the beginning.