We’ve been talking about holiday shopping trends – especially with regard to viral spending – for the past few weeks. Now it’s time to look at some key figures and report back on how the major shopping event actually went down.
You may be surprised to learn that even all the hype for Cyber Monday 2011 failed to anticipate the actual numbers that e-commerce retailers would see. They were actually even higher than either the optimists or analysts predicted. In fact, Search Engine Watch reported that November 28, 2011 was the biggest online shopping day in U.S. history based on data from such sources as comScore, PayPal and IBM.
SalesTracker reported that online sales rose 33% from the average on the Monday after Thanksgiving, according to IBM Benchmark (comScore reports a 22% surge). Each individual purchase rose 2.6% from the average order. The total amount of sales recorded by comScore was $1.25 billion in that 24-hour period. The same source concluded that more than half of all purchases were conducted from office computers as workers spent their post-holiday, back-to-work breaks (we hope!) on shopping to catch limited-time, heavy online markdowns.
With regard to the importance of mobile marketing, we have to also note that transactions conducted via smartphone – both Web access and specific shopping apps – represented 7.37% of sales this past Monday – which is a strong surge from last year’s 2.25%. (Figures as reported by The Washington Post; may vary slightly depending on statistics source – for example, IBM reports the surge as 3.9% in 2010 to 10.8% in 2011.) Sales conducted by iPad rather than phone clocked in at 3.3% of mobile purchases, states IBM.
Top e-tailers across the board on Cyber Monday were Target, Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Amazon. Retailers can earn up to 40% of their annual income during the span of the holiday season, especially with highly promoted shopping days like Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday.
Did you feel like you adequately prepared your company for visibility via online advertising on Cyber Monday? Are you interested in taking advantage of mobile marketing as this phone-based shopping trend continues to explode? Let us know!