In shops across the country, including the empty malls of Georgia and the "not too crazy" crowds at struggling J. Crew, the relative calm that accompanied Black Friday shopping this year belied a frenzy for deals — many of them on the web.
EBay boasted that it was selling two hoverboards, the "it" item of the season, every minute. Walmart said it had sold so many movies that it would take close to 3,000 years to watch all of them; many of its sales were online.
Adobe, which tracked more than 180 million visits to over 4,500 United States retail websites this Thanksgiving, said shoppers spent $ 1.73 billion online on Thursday — or 22 percent more than 2014. Almost 60 percent of the traffic came from mobile devices.
Early online data for Black Friday showed less oomph. But then online sales grew about 15 percent between midnight and 11 a.m. on Friday compared to the same time frame last year, with shoppers spending $ 822 million during that time period. Adobe expects Black Friday to generate $ 2.6 billion in total online sales, a 14 percent increase compared to the same day last year.
Brick-and-mortar stores saw less action. A preliminary reading of Black Friday by Retail Metrics declared traffic across apparel and department stores "uninspiring." The analytics company now expects November sales at major retailers to fall by 0.9 percent over all.
At Amazon, it was another matter.
By mid-Friday, sales at Amazon were estimated to have jumped 19.6 percent this Black Friday compared to last year, according to the e-commerce analytics company, ChannelAdvisor. Google Shopping grew 26.42 percent, ChannelAdvisor said, albeit from a smaller base.
According to Adobe, many of the top sellers online were electronics, including the Samsung 4K TV, Sony PlayStation 4, iPad Air 2 and Xbox One. Another strong category was toys. Lego Dimensions, Barbie Dream House and the BB-8 droid robot from the new "Star Wars" film sold out online.
Discounts averaging 26 percent off were driving higher sales this year, Adobe said, and average online purchases rose 5 percent from last year to $ 162. Doorbuster sales made up about 40 percent of sales volume.
More Coverage of the Shopping Season
Mickey Mericle, Adobe's vice president of marketing insights and analytics, said that this holiday shoppers seemed to finally be using their mobile devices not just to browse, but to make purchases.
"We've always seen that there's a higher degree of browsing on phones, but people reported that there were still barriers to purchasing on the phones," she said. "They didn't have their credit card info in there, and they didn't want to type that in, or maybe they couldn't see the product as well as they wanted to."
But that gap seemed to be narrowing, she said. Adobe had expected to see 29 cents on the dollar of transactions through mobile devices — but the company saw 37 cents on the dollar on mobile.
"What I suspect is happening is that people as they are shopping using their mobile device, they already have their info in there. They don't have to enter info this year," she said. The rise of mobile wallets, like PayPal or Apple Pay, was also making mobile shopping easier, she said.
At brick-and-mortar stores, foot traffic was declining as consumers increasingly shifted shopping online, Ken Perkins, a research analyst at Retail Metrics, wrote in a note. This also allowed shoppers to do in-depth research, so that even if they ultimately bought some items in store, shoppers would make a beeline for their sought-after item, without staying to browse other shelves or departments, he said.
Consumers are also spending more on restaurants, sports events, concerts, travel and services like spas. And both in stores and online, retailers benefited from earlier shopping with many starting offering deals soon after Halloween, he said.
Still, consumers appear to be more financially secure this holiday season than they have been at any time since the financial crisis. Gas prices are down, and savings rates are on the rise. The job market remains strong.
Over all, holiday spending is expected to grow at a far slower pace. The National Retail Federation, a trade group, expects retail sales online and in stores in November and December to rise at a rate of 3.7 percent, to $ 630 billion — slightly less than last year's 4.1 percent gain.
Walmart said that more than 25 million customers had found store maps and its Black Friday circulars online and on mobile, and that tens of millions had "visited our digital and physical aisles."
Target reported "some of the best days we've seen on Target.com," and said it expected to see demand continue through the weekend into December, on strong sales of Star Wars and Apple products, as well as its exclusive version of Adele's new album.
One retailer with high stakes riding on this holiday season is J. Crew, whose sales slump has sent its bonds into a downward spiral, sparking talk of a possible debt restructuring.
Middle-of-the-road stores like J. Crew and Banana Republic have struggled in an increasingly polarized market dominated on one end by the likes of H&M and Zara, which offer a high turnover of styles at far more competitive prices, and on the other by more high-end, luxury or specialty brands, like The Row or Everlane.
At the J. Crew at the Walt Whitman Shops in Huntington, N.Y. — where signs advertised up to 50 percent off in the sale section — Nancy Moley, a personal stylist, said Black Friday was going "comfortably, not crazy."
Kathy Reinertsen and her daughter Hannah said that J. Crew's Black Friday prices were still too high.
"They weren't worth it," Ms. Reinertsen said.
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