39% percent of all e-commerce sales were made on a smartphone on Black Friday, according to research from Adobe reported on by Andrea Lillo in HFN magazine.
And this growth came at the expense of in-store traffic: "In-store traffic on Black Friday fell 2.1 percent compared to last year, Newsday reported this morning, citing RetailNext, a San Jose, Calif.-based retail analytics company. "
Ms Lillo goes on to share that big e-commerce companies, such as Amazon, are beating up indie stores on this growing tech front.
"E-commerce giants...were outperforming their smaller counterparts...in revenue driven by smartphones: their smartphone revenue share was 11 percent higher."
And: Big tech was "66 percent more efficient at converting customer smartphone visits into sales... In addition, those larger e-commerce retailers have seen a 62 percent boost in sales this season versus a 27 percent increase for smaller retailers."
62% growth vs 27% growth is not just 35%, it means that Amazon is 2x as successful at closing the sale. Anytime a competitor is 2x as successful, that advantage will snowball with time and eventually prove fatal to the underdog.
Amazon and other giants will keep reinvesting these gains in tech and making their website more and more powerful. They'll take the revenue and offer quicker shipping--which they've already started to do. The smaller entities, which are underfunded and 'under-tech'd', will be more and more at a digital disadvantage.
This reminds me of a poster that I made wishing for digital equality for all businesses.