comScore: Record online sales on Black Friday

comScore has reported a significant 26% rise in online sales compared to last year. This year's Black Friday online sales totaled $1.04 billion compared with last year's total of $816 million.

Unsurprisingly, Amazon.com was the most popular online destination and the firm has posted its highest-ever YoY visitor growth rate. Walmart came in as the second most-popular place to shop online followed by sites in the Best Buy group, Target and Apple.

Meanwhile, Black Friday sales in brick and mortar stores were down 1.8% from the same day last year to $11.2 billion, according to ShopperTrak which measures and analyzes foot traffic across more than 50,000 retail locations across the U.S. That's despite store visits rising 3.5% from last year to more than 307 million.

There's little doubt that the early opening of stores on Thanksgiving Day and midnight deals accounted for the drop in sales on Black Friday. In addition, while store visits rose, many shoppers will have used their mobile device to make purchases to avoid queuing in-store and lugging around bags in the crowds.

"Black Friday continues to be an important day in retail," said Bill Martin, ShopperTrak founder. "This year, though, more retailers than last year began their 'doorbuster' deals on Thursday, Thanksgiving itself. So while foot traffic did increase on Friday, those Thursday deals attracted some of the spending that's usually meant for Friday."

eBay-owned PayPal has reported that Black Friday global mobile payments volume was up 193% from last year along with a huge jump in transactions.

Tags: Black Friday, brick and mortar, ecommerce, holiday 2012 trends, holiday season, online sales, retail traffic