Online sales up 14 percent during holiday shopping season

Retailers are still calculating their holiday performance, but online shopping, particularly mobile shopping, surged in popularity during the recent holiday period, according to a report.

Online sales grew 13.9 percent from Nov. 1 to Dec. 31 compared with the same period in 2013, according to IBM Digital Analytics. Mobile sales accounted for almost one-quarter of online sales, up 27 percent from 2013, mostly through tablets.

The growth was more dramatic than in the previous year. Online sales grew 8.5 percent during the 2013 holidays compared with the same period in 2012. People spent less per transaction, though. The average online order value dropped 8 percent in 2014 to $119.33.

Online sales make up a sliver of total retail sales — anywhere from 7 to 14 percent, depending on the source — but are growing at a faster rate than overall industry sales. The National Retail Federation estimated that total holiday spending would grow 4.1 percent this season.

Shoppers increasingly used their mobile devices to browse, accounting for almost half of all online holiday traffic, up 25.5 percent over last year. Most mobile browsing took place on smartphones.

In a separate study on cybersecurity, IBM found that the number of cyberattacks on U.S. retailers declined 50 percent from Nov. 24 to Dec. 5 in 2014 compared with the same time period 2013. Still, data thieves accessed 61 million records from businesses during 2014, the company said.