Black Friday Sets New Online Spending Record With $11.8 Billion In Sales

Despite consumer sentiment being at an all-time low and shoppers feeling the weight of inflation, Black Friday sales reached new records this year, with e-commerce fuelling the holiday event. U.S. shoppers spent $11.8 billion on the year’s biggest shopping day, according to Adobe Analytics. Here are the top takeaways from this year’s biggest holiday sale:

Beauty And Fitness Among Top Performing Categories On Shopify

Shopify merchants generated a record-breaking $14.6 billion in Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales, up 27% from last year according to Shopify president Harry Finkelstein. In a Shopify post, the company shared that top product categories were cosmetics, clothing tops, activewear, and fitness & nutrition. Alo, Skims, Merit Beauty, Ilia Beauty and Cosy Earth were amongst the most trending brands, surely exceeding expectations in terms of traffic and sales volume. The average cart price was $114.70, with top selling cities being Los Angeles, New York, London, San Francisco, Miami.

Shopify shared additional data about these record sale numbers, indicating that 81+ million customers around the world bought from businesses powered by Shopify. More than 94,900 merchants had their highest-selling day ever on Shopify, with peak sales per minute netting $5.1 million at 12:01 PM EST on Black Friday.

AI Boosted Online Traffic And Sales On Black Friday

In what is surely becoming a new shopping behavior, customers leveraged AI tools to identify the best deals, which boosted AI-driven traffic to retailers websites by 805% year-on-year, according to Adobe. This goes in line with rising dynamics whereby AI tools such as ChatGPT are slowly taking over search engines like Google, becoming shopping destinations that include brand discovery and check-out all in the same place. OpenAI rolled out instant checkout for ChatGPT merchants in the U.S. just a few months ago, signaling a clear ambition to become not only a leading AI tool but a new e-commerce solution and platform as well.

This trend is driven by consumers’ desire for speed and efficiency, turning to chatbots and other AI-powered tools to get answers quickly and make sure to have the best deals available. In response, retailers are developing AI solutions to make shopping as personalized and convenient for shoppers as possible: Amazon’s Rufus or Walmart’s Sparky shopping agents have been deployed with the goal to boost sales, which seems to have bear fruit this year.

“More than 250 million customers have used Rufus this year, with monthly average users up 149% and interactions up 210% over the past year,” Amazon said according to Pymnts.com. “Customers who use it while shopping are over 60% more likely to make a purchase during that shopping trip.”

Buy Now, Pay Later Attracted More Shoppers

Buy now, pay later payment options represented $747.5 million in online spend in the U.S. on Black Friday, up 8.9% year over year, according to Adobe Analytics. Adobe predicted that BNPL usage would cross $1 billion by the end of Cyber Week, hinting that consumers were eager to spend even if they didn’t necessarily have the cash to do so. The financing option surely helps fuel e-commerce sales, but the reality is that it also has hidden costs for shoppers. A “Buy Now, Pain Later” research study found that being offered BNPL by a favorite retailer predicts a shopper’s willingness to use it and that these users had an 8.9% increase in overdraft charges, a 2.5% increase in credit card interest, and an 8.4% increase in late fees.

This payment option is becoming increasingly popular, and will likely face more stringent regulations as more users opt for payment installments.

Mall Traffic Remained Strong, But Overall Store Visits decreased

While e-commerce has become a consumer favorite, foot traffic also reached new records for malls. Mall of America set record breaking attendance on Black Friday, with 235,000 people visiting the mall that day and half a million through Sunday November 30th, the busiest attendance in the mall’s history. This represents an increase of 8%, a significant number considering the current economic context.

However, attendance decreased for the majority of small retailers as shoppers turned to e-commerce for convenience and to get the best possible discounts. Early data from RetailNext announced a 5.3% year-over-year decrease for foot traffic across the weekend.

Joe Shasteen, Global Head of Advanced Analytics at RetailNext shared that “Black Friday 2025 didn’t kill the holiday; it changed how shoppers approached it.” “Foot traffic was down on Friday and on Saturday, but that wasn’t disinterest, it was intention. Shoppers showed they’re done with the impulse-driven, one-day frenzy. Prices, tariffs, and tighter budgets pushed people to shop with discipline, not adrenaline, and they responded by turning Black Friday into a value calculation”.

Despite the drop, the holiday sale still represented the highest in-store traffic for the year, emphasizing just how relevant Black Friday has become for retailers when it comes to end-of-year shopping and gifting.