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With still a few days to go, many online retailers have decided to go for a headstart on Black Friday Weekend, with massive discounts now available in stores such as Amazon, Walmart, and Target –with other outlets joining them by the minute. You know that once Amazon does it, everyone will do it!
Sales are up an impressive 19% on last year, with mobile traffic doubling from 24.4 to 48.5%! We created this post for you guys last week about mobile optimization for this very reason…we knew the boom was coming, and here is it!
Smartphone’s generated much more traffic than tablets this year, with a slam dunk of 31.8% of all online traffic, compared to 16.5% of tablet users. However tablet users spent nearly twice the amount of Smartphone users and accounted for 17.3% of sales, compared to a more conservative 9.2%. One possible reason for this is that customers are initially browsing on their Smartphone devices and reverting to the tablet when they want to make a purchase.
IOS users are trumping Android users in the spending spree, according to a survey by IBM – with 20.8% of all sales coming from an IOS device, whilst Android users drove only 5.4% of sales. The average order increased also, with IOS users averaging at an order of $111.55 compared to $86.56 for Android users and resulting in a 28.9% difference.
The trusty desktop hasn’t hit the scrap heap yet though as it accounted for 51.2% of online traffic and 73.4% of sales. Consumers also spent 17% more on their desktops (123.29%) in comparison to mobile (105.37%), say IBM.
The only fly in the ointment is that consumers are spending slightly less than last year with a decrease in spending of 5.4%; however this can be easily attributed to the ever expanding marketplace and price/discount options now available to the savvy online shopper.
Jay Henderson, Director at IBM Smarter Commerce, made a pretty positive point when speaking about the upsurge in traffic this year. Henderson stated that in-store sales aren’t expected to take a hit on account of the ecommerce shift and are also predicted to increase, ‘This year, we are predicting in-store growth of four percent, so in our opinion, both in-store and e-commerce are growing this year, but we are of course seeing more growth online,” he said. ‘We are seeing incremental consumer spending shifting toward e-commerce. Combine this with the elongation of the holiday shopping weekend, holiday promotions beginning earlier and lasting longer, we see tremendous growth.’
‘Ultimately, these trends lead to an overall lift in sales, rather than cannibalizing of other days’. Henderson added.
Retailers are constantly seeking to find ways to prolong the sales period, and it looks like they’ve really hit the ground running this year by turning Black Friday into a weeklong event. It will certainly be interesting to see how Cyber Monday goes now, following the pre-sale success.