Black Friday: Offline spending flat, online up

According to Coremetrics, online merchants saw spending rise 16% on Black Friday, with an average order of $190.80, 12% more than on the same day last year.

Coremetrics also recorded a rise in the number of people logging on to a retailer's website from a mobile device - up to 5.6% from less than 1% last year.

"On Black Friday, consumers came, they clicked and they shopped their way across the Internet, and this time, they weren't just looking for bargains," said John Squire, chief strategy officer, IBM Coremetrics.

"Consequently, we're watching online retail, and increasingly social media and mobile, become the growth engines for retailers everywhere as consumers embrace online shopping not only for its ease and convenience, but as a primary means of researching goods and services."

The latest numbers from Comscore show that $648 million of Black Friday's total sales came from online shopping, up 9% from the $595 million spent online during Black Friday 2009.

Data from ShopperTrak showed spending at bricks and mortar outlets was pretty much the same as last year, rising just 0.3%, and traffic rose just 2.2%.

"Retailers were very conscious of driving traffic early in November and in doing so some might have thinned Black Friday spending a bit," said ShopperTrak founder, Bill Martin.

"The reality is we have a deal driven consumer in 2010 and that consumer responded to some of the earliest deep discounts we've even seen for the holidays."

Tags: Black Friday, ecommerce