As the months-long coronavirus pandemic has forced more people than ever to do their shopping online, Amazon has indeed become the destination of choice.

Driven largely by online sales during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the e-commerce giant has announced that this year's holiday shopping season was the biggest in the company’s history.

Amazon did not provide specific financial figures on how much was spent during Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

The retailer, though, did note that independent businesses selling on the platform surpassed $4.8 billion in worldwide sales between the two large-scale shopping events—a surge of 60 percent from last year. It added that more than seventy thousand small and medium-sized businesses were able to enjoy sales of more than $100,000 in this holiday season.

“In a holiday season unlike any other, it’s clear that customers still want great deals on gifts for their loved ones or a little something extra for themselves, and we’re glad to help deliver smiles throughout the season,” Jeff Wilke, the chief executive officer of Amazon Worldwide Consumer, said in a blog post.

“Thank you to our customers, employees, and selling partners around the world for making this our biggest holiday season to date, and for everything you’re doing to support our communities and each other now and throughout the year.”

The best-selling items included Amazon’s new Echo Dot, one of several products made by the company and discounted during the holiday season, former President Barack Obama’s latest book, A Promised Land, the Revlon One-Step Hair Dryer and Volumizer Hot Air Brush, and the Lite-Brite Ultimate Classic.

With the pandemic on the minds of most people across the country, Black Friday foot traffic in stores cratered 52.1 percent compared to last year, according to Sensormatic Solutions. However, with a record number of consumers pivoting to shopping on computers and smartphones instead, online spending surged nearly 22 percent to hit $9 billion, according to data from Adobe Analytics.

Consumers spent $6.3 million per minute shopping online on Black Friday—or $27.50 on average per person. About $3.6 billion was spent via smartphones, a 25.3 percent increase compared to last year, reaching 40 percent of all online spending.

As for Cyber Monday, consumers opened their wallets to the tune of $10.8 billion, setting a record for the largest internet shopping day ever in the United States. Spending climbed 15.1 percent compared to the year prior, according to Adobe, which cut its online sales forecast for the entire holiday season to $184 billion—still a hefty 30 percent increase from last year. The original forecast called for sales of $189 billion.

Ethen Kim Lieser is a Minneapolis-based Science and Tech Editor who has held posts at Google, The Korea Herald, Lincoln Journal Star, AsianWeek, and Arirang TV. Follow or contact him on LinkedIn.  

Image: Reuters