Will online shopping affect the Black Friday turn out?

IDAHO FALLS, Idaho (KIFI/KIDK) - "It's a madhouse." That's one description of the annual shopping holiday, Black Friday, from Best Buy employee Jamie Whitman.

He's spent many years on the sales floor during the chaotic shopping day. As the years' pass, his store has seen one dramatic change

"We do have a lot more online, pick up going on. So, on top of everybody impacted the store, we've got to handle in-store pickups as well from web orders," Whitman said.

With deals hitting the stores and web long before the actual shopping holiday, waiting until Black Friday in some cases means taking a risk that your desired purchases might be already sold out.

Whitman tells us there is one benefit shoppers can only get at a brick-and-mortar retailer.

"They still want to feel the product I want to leave with it today," Whitman said.

Every year stores get their deals out earlier and earlier, which forces other retailers like Cabelas to do the same.

"A lot of our competitors are opening earlier. So we've kind of had to combat that change with opening our store on Thanksgiving as well," said Cabelas store manager, Taryn Wright.

To keep the Black Friday spirit alive and drive people to show up at the store, Cabelas follows the traditional Black Friday time frame when it comes to some of their best deals that can only be found in the store.

"It's fun, it's an experience tradition, awesome, I love it. It's like I said it's almost like it's a holiday," Wright said.

With hundreds of huge signs claiming incredible discounts on products, it can be hard to tell if it's really a great deal at a first glance, Jon Vincent, the founder of earlyblackfriday.com, shares a useful tip.

"Rule of thumb would be if the discount is less than 30% off, I would not buy it on Black Friday, I would wait until Cyber Monday or for one of the later holiday sales, you'll probably get a better deal then," Vincent said.