US Black Friday sales online top $1bn

Black Friday retail sales in the US this year topped $US1 billion ($A95 million) for the first time ever as more consumers used the internet do their holiday shopping.

Online sales jumped at least 22 percent on Black Friday - from sales of $US816 million on the same day last year, according to digital analytics firm comScore.

E-commerce accounts for less than 10 percent of consumer spending in the United States. However, it is growing much faster than bricks-and-mortar retail as shoppers are lured by low prices, convenience, faster shipping and wide selection.

ShopperTrak, which counts foot traffic in physical retail stores, estimated Black Friday sales of $US11.2 billion, down 1.8 percent from the same day last year.

ComScore expects online retail spending to rise 17 percent to $US43.4 billion through the whole holiday season. That is above the 15 percent increase last season and ahead of the retail industry's expectation for a 4.1 percent increase in overall spending this holiday.

It's not clear yet whether strong Black Friday sales online will weaken growth on Cyber Monday, which has been the biggest e-commerce day in the United States in recent years.

A big source of online shopping growth this holiday season has come from increased use of smartphones and tablets.

Mobile devices accounted for 26 percent of visits to retail websites and 16 percent of purchases on Black Friday. That was up from 18.1 percent and 10.3 percent, respectively, on the same day last year, according to International Business Machines, which analyses online traffic and transactions from 500 US retailers.

Amazon.com was the most visited retail website on Black Friday, with more than 28 million visits, followed by Wal-Mart Stores's website, with 18.4 million and Best Buy's site, which had 9.2 million visits, according to Hitwise.

Worth noting: eBay runs one of the largest online marketplaces, rather than being a retailer, so its online traffic was not reported by Hitwise. However, eBay said the volume of mobile transactions on its marketplace jumped 153 percent on Black Friday from a year earlier.

While mobile devices may be good for sales, they may not be so good for retail profit margins. Smartphones give shoppers real-time access to product prices online, potentially exacerbating the usual holiday discounting and price wars.

Black Friday online transactions jumped almost 30 percent, but the average ticket price was down more than 11 percent, according to Chase Paymentech, which reports data from its 50 largest e-commerce merchant clients.