What happens next Where's my refund? Best CD rates this month Shop and save 🤑
MONEY

Online sales spike before Black Friday

Hadley Malcolm
USA TODAY

Online sales are already spiking as shoppers take advantage of early deals that will leave them free to enjoy Thanksgiving at home instead of in stores.

Online orders have spiked in the days leading up to Black Friday as shoppers take advantage of early promotions from retailers.

Data show retailers are benefiting from the strategy of starting Black Friday promotions early. Online sales  Tuesday were up 21% over the same day last year, according to IBM Watson Trend, which tracks spending by monitoring millions of transactions from retail websites.

Consumers are spending more per order — the average order value  Tuesday from mobile and desktop shoppers was up more than $5 from a year ago to $135.20, according to IBM.

Much like last year, retailers started making their deals available earlier this season in a bid to get ahead of competition, give shoppers more options and satisfy increasing appetites for online shopping. Plus, the sales cater to shoppers who don't necessarily want to shop on Thanksgiving, which is when retailers have started opening stores for Black Friday sales in recent years, says Jay Henderson, director of IBM Marketing Cloud.

"As retailers make the deals available earlier, (consumers are) shopping earlier so they can get that out of the way and focus on Thanksgiving Day with their families," he says.

Despite online growth, here's why stores will still be packed this weekend

Mark Blakley, 31, from Tulsa says he and his wife, Megan, have  purchased several items from their shopping list this week at "Black Friday" prices, including a 16GB iPad Air from Staples that he was able to order at the advertised $319 Black Friday price  Sunday. They'll probably still go out to some stores  Thursday, he says, because it's become a family tradition, but they won't hit as many or spend as much time shopping.

"Why go fight the crowds and wait in line for an hour when you can do it for five minutes at home," he says.

Amazon started offering Black Friday deals last Friday and plans to roll out new offers as often as every five minutes through Black Friday on Nov. 27. The prolonged sale is paying off for Amazon, leading to a 12% rise in desktop traffic Nov. 22 compared with average visits over the previous three Sundays, according to SimilarWeb, a market intelligence firm.

What time will stores open on Thanksgiving?

Target's "10 Days of Deals" — the retailer is rolling out discounts on different categories, such as electronics or kitchenware, every day from Nov. 22 through Dec. 1 — spurred early spending. The retailer's online sales were up 43.2% over Nov. 1-18 compared with the same period a year ago, according to Slice Intelligence, which monitors email receipts from a panel of more than three million U.S. online shoppers.

Walmart, which opted for fewer flash deals this holiday season in favor of making promotions available over a longer period of time, saw an online sales uptick of 11.6% in the Nov. 1-18 period, according to Slice.

Featured Weekly Ad