Amazon Prime Day Drives $6.4B in Online Shopping on First Day

Amazon Prime Day is one of the biggest shopping events of the year, with deals on everything from headphones to pet supplies, and it's already spurred record online spending in the US.  

Shoppers spent $6.4 billion across e-commerce sites on July 11, the first day of Amazon's two-day shopping event, according to data from Adobe Analytics. This marks an almost 6% jump in online sales over last year and makes Tuesday the biggest e-commerce day of the year so far. Adobe said online sales were driven Tuesday by purchases of appliances, toys and electronics. 

Online shoppers took advantage of buy now, pay later options, which let people buy a product and then pay for it over a set period of time via installments. BNPL orders were up almost 20% compared with the first day of Prime Day last year, totaling around $461 million on Tuesday, according to Adobe.

While BNPL options are one way to finance an Amazon Prime Day purchase, CNET's Katie Teague suggests considering Amazon Layaway as an alternative. Layaway breaks up the cost of an item across five payments and poses few risks if you miss a payment. However, unlike BNPL purchases, your item won't ship until it's paid off. 

Prime Day continues through today, but Amazon isn't the only company holding sales this week. Walmart, Best Buy and Target are running their own big sales to compete.