More consumers are going online to make holiday purchases, and marketers can be there to provide conversion-driving web content.

Black Friday sales are growing, but that doesn’t necessarily mean consumers are queuing up in longer lines late on Thanksgiving night to score door-buster deals. ComScore already released official figures from Black Friday, which showed online desktop transactions increased 15 percent over last year. This web-based shopping surge is a characteristic of the ‘couch commerce’ trend, dubbed by ComScore. Consumers are now accustomed to convenient transactions and expect brands to have custom content for promotions and sophisticated websites that allow them to browse and buy virtually.

In total, U.S. shoppers spent around $1.2 billion on Black Friday alone, a 15 percent increase over 2012 totals. This is nearly on par with projections for the 2013 holiday shopping season’s potential sky-high Black Friday sales. Brafton’s recent feature list, “34 Statistics marketers can be thankful for this holiday season,” covered the 2013 Adobe Digital Index, which predicted online Black Friday sales would increase 17 percent to $1.6 billion.

It’s promising to see actual figures come close to optimistic projections, and what’s more exciting is that this is just the tip of the holiday-shopping iceberg. Thanks to the ‘couch commerce’ trend, Cyber Monday will be the sweetheart of the retail weekend with sales expected to reach $2.3 billion this year.

U.S. shoppers spent around $1.2 billion on Black Friday alone, a 15 percent increase over 2012 totals.

The brands that create a robust pipeline of custom content are the ones that stand to benefit most significantly from consumers’ tendency to shop online. According to ComScore, the retailers that earned the most visits on Black Friday were Amazon, eBay, Walmart, Best Buy and Target. A few of these companies might owe their traffic upticks to visits from customers researching Black Friday deals online first, but these domains are examples of sites with comprehensive web content.

People will spend longer on sites, and possibly make their purchase decisions on the spot – or site – when marketing teams give them the collateral they need. Brands that provide transparent messages about why their products and price points are superior, while perhaps throwing a holiday incentive on top, can turn web browsers into online conversions this season.

Lauren Kaye is a Marketing Editor at Brafton Inc. She studied creative and technical writing at Virginia Tech before pursuing the digital frontier and finding content marketing was the best place to put her passions to work. Lauren also writes creative short fiction, hikes in New England and appreciates a good book recommendation.