Mobile shopping fuelled record sales on Thanksgiving, as it edged ahead of the traditional big retail day in the US, Black Friday, in mobile commerce and traffic.

Black Friday saw the biggest increase in online activity, growing 20.7 per cent since last year as canny shoppers beat the queues by shopping from home, while online sales on Thanksgiving grew by 17.4 per cent.

IBM’s Digital Analytics Benchmark for Black Friday saw the biggest surge come from mobile consumers, with sales reaching 16.3 per cent of all online sales, up from up from 9.8 per cent in 2011. Thanksgiving saw 18 per cent of online purchases made through mobile.

24 per cent of Black Friday consumers used a mobile device to visit a retailers site, up from 14.3 per cent in 2011. 25 per cent did so on Thanksgiving.

58 per cent said they used smartphones to look for bargains, compared to 41  per cent who used tablet. But browsing was led by the iPad, which generated more traffic than any other mobile device.

The iPad dominated tablet traffic – gaining 88.3 per cent share, followed by the Nook at 3.1 per cent, Amazon Kindle at 2.4 per cent and the Samsung Galaxy at 1.8 per cent.

“The big winners were chief marketing officers who used technology to deliver customer experiences that not only connected shoppers with personalised deals but did so at the right touchpoint and at precisely the right time and place, whether on their couch or the store floor,” said Jay Henderson, strategy director, IBM Smarter Commerce.