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Great Black Friday Retail Analytics - compliments of IBM!

Our mega Black Friday wrap report is now out and it's chalked full of data goodness. So grab a cup of coffee, fire up the analystics machine, and start the day off right with our Benchmark.

The headline: Black Friday drove a 9.5% sales increase from last year!

While Thanksgiving is starting to eat into sales, Black Friday continues to pay dividend for online retailers with a 9.5% sales jump vs. last year according to IBM’s real-time analytics.

Mobile shopping makes its mark on Black Friday as nearly half of online retail traffic came from mobile devices after beating the 50% mobile traffic mark on Thanksgiving. Black Friday mobile sales reached nearly 27.9% of all online sales, an increase of 28.2% last year.

New York City shoppers topped all online shoppers in Black Friday sales, according to the IBM data. New York was followed by Washington DC, Atlanta, Los Angeles and Chicago.

In the battle of mobile devices, smartphone users were driving the most traffic on Black Friday, but it was tablet users who converted more sales.

Health & Beauty and Home Good online outlets were among the big winners on Black Friday according to IBM data analytics reports. Health & Beauty sales surged 56.9% while Home Goods built a 43.2% increase.

Facebook users coverted orders at nearly four times as many sales than Pinterest on Black Friday. Facebook also drove a higher average order value ($109.94) compared to Pinterest ($100.24)

Summarized -- Here's other Top 8 Factoids:

1. Mobile drives over 49.6% of all online retail traffic on BlackFriday
2. Mobile drives more than 1/2 of all online retail traffic for 1st time on Thanksgiving
3. NYC is the #1 shopping city!  Top cities for online retail sales on BlackFriday: NYC, DC, Atlanta, Los Angelos, Chicago
4. Smartphones drive clicks but tablets drive cha-chings on #BlackFriday
5. Retailers get more targeted with the #BlackFriday email promotions sending 11% fewer messages
6. Apple iOS takes nearly 4x bigger bite of #BlackFriday mobile shopping sales vs. Android
7. Apple devices drive more than 2x traffic to online retailers than Android  and Apple iOS shoppers spend $121.86 per order vs. $98.07 for Androd – a 24% difference!!
8. Facebook users convert sales at more than 2x rate of Pinterest on #BlackFriday

by sandraanncarter