Black Friday to Cyber Monday: Key Takeaways and Tips
Although the first snow has not fallen yet (at least not here in Lancaster, PA), winter and the holiday season have arrived. It’s December, which means the biggest shopping days of the year have come and gone. From Black Friday through Cyber Monday, here’s a breakdown of the important stats and how they can help your eCommerce business.
Takeaway: Cyber Monday was the biggest online sales day EVER & Black Friday online sales were the biggest ever for that day
Adobe announced that shoppers spent $3.45 billion dollars online on Cyber Monday, with a third of it coming from mobile. This is more than analysts had predicted and is a 12% increase from last year. On Black Friday, the expected increase was about 11%, but the actual result was double that. 2016 Black Friday online sales totaled $3.34 billion, compared to $2.74 billion in 2015. Of these online sales, just over a third were made on mobile devices; this Black Friday was the first day ever to hit $1 billion in mobile sales.
Tips: This was a great weekend for eCommerce retailers. Although Cyber Monday had more sales, Black Friday proved that it is here to stay. Online shopping is expected to increase in the coming years, with mobile shopping on the rise as well. Take a look at your sales reports, analytics, paid search results, and any other data you have and see how your business performed between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday. Did you run any special promotions? Which of your marketing campaigns were most successful? This information can help you finish out the holiday shopping season strong and provide insight for your 2017 strategic plan.
Takeaway: Over Black Friday weekend, more people bought online than in-store
Almost ten million more people, actually. According to Fortune, about 99 million people hit brick-and-mortar stores while over 108 million shopped online. This is an increase from last year, when the numbers were fairly even.
Tips: This is great news for eCommerce! Cyber Monday is obviously a great day for online shopping, but now Black Friday is as well. Retailers will need to keep this in mind for next Black Friday, and throughout the rest of the year. For those who have both online and physical stores, “ship to store” options will become increasingly essential.
Takeaway: More shoppers, less average spending
Despite record-setting sales, the average amount spent decreased by about ten dollars per person. The decrease has been attributed to lingering concerns from the economic recession, a plethora of discounts, and electronics deflation.
Tips: Increasing average order value (AOV) is an important tactic in your eCommerce strategy. Cross sells, up sells, and related products can help improve AOV. Make sure customers are aware of additional products that would go with the product they are purchasing, higher-end versions of the original product, and products that other customers bought based on that item.
Takeaway: Mobile is getting better, but still not great
Despite record online sales during this period, there are still a lot of problems with the mobile shopping experience. According to CNET, people make smaller purchases on mobile than desktop. For most mobile sites, it is still inconvenient to browse and look at many different products. Plus, checkout processes can still be hard to maneuver.
Tips: You may be tired of hearing it, but it’s not going to stop – mobile is a necessity! More and more customers are shopping and buying on mobile every year. This is not a trend that you can afford to miss out on. Thanks to Google’s rollout of mobile-first indexing, a great mobile site has become more important than ever.
Takeaway: Some major sites were slow
According to Internet Retailer, many big-name retailer sites like Old Navy, Macy’s, and Lenovo experienced an array of slowdowns, outages, or checkout issues. It is unclear how much revenue may have been lost due to these problems.
Tips: Get a Magento Code Audit done before the holiday shopping season. The audit will evaluate site performance, ensure clean code, review security, and find anything that does not conform to best practices. When your site is safe, loads quickly, and has no bad or extraneous code, you are less likely to experience these kinds of problems. Another thing you can do is have a support provider in your corner. A support provider can monitor your site for any problems and fix them as they arise. You can also tell the provider when there is an issue on your site that needs a priority response.
For help with creating a responsive site, code audits, ongoing support, analytics, and more, contact ParadoxLabs at 717-431-3330 or sales@paradoxlabs.com.
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