Let's see the highlights of the last year - and in 2018 the cyber week or the cyber five, as the U.S. call it - it has been amazing over there. Ah, they broke, they have broken a lot of records, with over $150 billion of their sales. Smartphones were the start were the star of the show, especially for Thanksgiving. Ah, cyber Monday with mobile was still strong, but not the same as thingsgiving. You can imagine that during thanksgiving people were spending more time on their phone and on Monday maybe they had to work a bit more. Oh, are they were in the office. So in the US, we have seen a lot of positive performance when it came to the peak season as a whole, whereas across the pond here in the UK, um, we have actually had a good November. But we have seen a decrease in December, and the decrease was actually higher than what the specialists predicted. Moreover, the same specialists, they're recognizing Brexit as the main reason for this contraction. So in case is going to be the same this year November in black Fry, they become even more important, and you'll need to up your game for the cyber week. Ah, when most of your customers are already starting to to to buy gifts.
In 2018 in the UK What we have seen is that online traffic has increased a lot - 46% year over year to be more exact. So even though December was not the best month black Friday's traffic was up 46% in 2018 comfort to 2017. So this actually makes it a shopping event that you cannot afford to miss. And both in the US And in the UK, Cybermonday has seen a massive increase. And it has solidified itself as one of the top shopping days in queue for so we do recommend thio have a strategy around this, and I'm gonna give some insight into what it is that you can do for both Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
In 2018 our VP of digital strategy Link put out there some trends and we have seen that all of them turned out to be true. 1st one was growth of online sales across the cyber week. And this has happened like we have seen a massive increase for, ah, things giving. We have seen ah, big increase for cyber Monday. So everything that we have looked at in terms of growth for 2018; it has happened.
Now for mobile, we were presenting back then the importance of mobile, and being prepared with concrete strategies and action. For most of our sellers, the 60% off site traffic coming from mobile with surpassed. And we do see this trend and number, even outside cyber week, as we implement dedicated strategies for mobile for our for our clients, so the hard work on mobile doesn't have to happen only for Q4, but it needs to be an effort throughout the year as the reward and return on it, it's worth it.
So the mobile, if you have a strategy off, I don't know knocking mobile down when your campaign's adjusting it with ah, negative bids. I do recommend to rethink this strategy. And I'm going to give, like, some concrete, actions that you can do to make the most out of mobile. Mobile might not work for your entire strategy, but there are definitely some components that you can have a look at and improve it.
Going back to to some of the trends of 2018 that we have seen happen. Amazon one with consistency across all the five days. Um, And if you don't have an Amazon advertising, or if you don't have Amazon advertising in your ah strategy or on your list for this year, you might have to to to think twice and actually added to the nice list. Today I will be presenting a couple of strategies that you can implement even if you're just starting with Amazon advertising. But feel free to search for morning four and recommendations on our blog - the ChannelAdvisor blawg or team is consistency uploading content around Amazon advertising.
And it's no surprise. Ah, they expected declining retail or or in store visits has decreased. Um, and, uh, in the UK it has dropped with about 7%. We do expect to see this happening in 2019 as well. Let's see how our Brexit is gonna play a role.
So this sums up everything that we've seen in 2018 as, trends, what has happened, some stats.
