By David Clucas

More online shopping, less in-store shopping — that was an easy prediction to make for the kickoff to the 2016 holiday shopping season. But just how big the shift came in surprised even the experts.

Black Friday online sales set a record of $3.34 billion, according to a report from digital services firm Adobe — up 21.6 percent from a year ago, and well surpassing its $3 billion prediction. Thanksgiving Day online sales came in at $1.93 billion, slightly below Adobe’s pre-holiday prediction of $2 billion, but still ahead 11.5 percent from a year ago. In total, the two-day period brought in $5.27 billion, up 17.7 percent from a year ago, and the entire four-day weekend brought in $9.36 billion, up 16.4 percent from a year ago.

Amazon, while it did not release specific figures, said its Thanksgiving Day shopping sales were significant. “Thanksgiving is quickly becoming one of the busiest mobile shopping days on Amazon in the U.S.,” company officials said. “In fact, mobile orders from Amazon customers on Thanksgiving Day exceeded both Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday 2015.”

Strong Mobile Sales
Perhaps the biggest number showing consumers’ shifting buying habits was that more than a third of Black Friday sales ($1.2 billion) were conducted via mobile devices, according to Adobe, up 33 percent from a year ago. Out of the 36 percent of Black Friday purchases via mobile, 25 percent came from smartphones, with 11 percent coming from tablets.

Paypal reiterated the mobile trend figures, saying it, too, saw a third of Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday sales passing through mobile devices on its network, which includes 192 million customers and 15 million retailers.

Beyond purchases, mobile traffic accounted for the majority of visits to retail websites on Black Friday, according to Adobe, putting the number at 55 percent mobile, including 45 percent from smartphones and 10 percent from tablets.

“Retailers that have invested in mobile, email and social have seen 30 percent more sales on average and 25 percent higher average order values,” Adobe officials said. The company’s Black Friday report is based on aggregated and anonymous data from 22.6 billion visits to retail websites, including 80 percent of all online transactions from the top 100 U.S. retailers.

“Shoppers hit the buy button at unprecedented levels as conversion rates were up nearly a full percent across all devices in the evening hours on Black Friday,” said Tamara Gaffney, principal analyst and director, Adobe Digital Insights. “With the full day total coming in at $3.34 billion, Black Friday may have just dethroned Cyber Monday’s position as the largest online shopping day of the year.”

In-Store Sales Drop
On the brick-and-mortar front, initial data from analytics firm RetailNext showed in-store sales down 5 percent over Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday versus 2015, including a 10.4 percent drop on Black Friday. While part of the drop comes from those high-flying online sales, officials said retail stores have also moved up their discounting to earlier in the week.

Consumers also seem less excited about the physical late-night or early-morning rush to stores. According to the National Retail Federation’s (NRF) survey of holiday shoppers, the largest group of shoppers (20 percent) headed out after 10 a.m. on Black Friday, whereas less than 15 percent arrived by 6 a.m. or earlier. Thanksgiving Day in-store shopping dropped by 19 percent, with only 7 percent of consumers heading to stores before 5 p.m.

Overall, the NRF said 44 percent of the people it surveyed shopped online, with 40 percent going to stores. Department stores received the majority of in-store traffic (50.9 percent), followed by discount stores at 34.2 percent, electronics stores at 31.8 percent and clothing/accessory stores at 28.4 percent, according to the survey.

Cyber Monday Still King
While the leap in Thursday-Friday online sales seem to have come at the cost to brick-and-mortar locations over the holiday weekend, there was no cannibalization of Cyber Monday, as some had predicted. The traditional online shopping day showed it was still king raking in $3.39 billion in sales, just ahead of Black Friday, and 10.2-percent higher than a year ago, according to Adobe. It marked the single-biggest online shopping day in history, again surpassing officials’ initial Cyber Monday sales estimates, which had been $3.12 billion.

“This indicates that consumers still had more appetite for online shopping despite the incredible volume of online sales on Black Friday,” Adobe’s Gaffney said.

Alternative Marketing
While a majority of the Black Friday weekend is focused on sales, some brands within the active lifestyle industry (which tend to see more business after the rush) focused more on marketing. For the second year in a row, outdoor retailer REI closed its stores on Black Friday and said more than 6 million customers pledged to #OptOutside during the day instead of going shopping. Meanwhile, Patagonia gained buzz with its promise to donate 100 percent of its Black Friday sales (which came in at $10 million) to environmental nonprofits.