Watch CBS News

IBM Service: Online Shopping Surges As Holiday Retail Season Begins

BOSTON (CBS) -- Online shopping is surging as the holiday retail season begins, according to IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark.

Overall online sales for Saturday were up 11.8 percent over the same day last year, according to IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark, a real-time, cloud-based digital analytics platform that tracks millions of transactions and analyzes raw data from about 800 retail sites nationwide.

Highlights of the IBM service's findings about Saturday's online shopping include the following:

  • Mobile traffic accounted for 41 percent of all online sales traffic, up more than 36 percent compared to the same period last year. Mobile sales remained strong, reaching 23.4 percent of all online sales, up 42 percent year-over-year.
  • Smartphones drove 25 percent of all online traffic compared to tablets at more than 15 percent, making it the browsing device of choice. When it comes to making the sale, tablets drove more than 16 percent of all online sales, more than double that of smartphones, which accounted for 7 percent.
  • As a percentage of total online sales, iOS was over four times higher than Android, driving 19.2 percent of sales vs. 4.1 percent for Android.
  • Saturday total online sales grew by 54.3 percent over 2012, with mobile percentage of sales growing by 46.6 percent.

MORE LOCAL NEWS FROM CBS BOSTON

View CBS News In
CBS News App Open
Chrome Safari Continue
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.