Consumers spent more than 14.5 billion dollars on Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday combined. People spent a record $6.59 billion online on Cyber Monday, $5.03 billion on Black Friday, and $2.87 billion on Thanksgiving Day, according to estimates from Adobe Analytics.
Online and brick and mortar retailers spend months preparing for the Thanksgiving shopping weekend, as it marks the true beginning of the holiday shopping season. You’ve already put up the holiday lights and installed a reindeer on the front lawn. Temperatures have dropped, and so have the prices – with extreme Black Friday/Cyber Monday pricing rollbacks launching literally overnight, and shoppers so hungry for deals that they’ll gladly line up to get that ultimate big box gift. Don’t let your holiday ecommerce game plan get lost in the snow.
With online shopping on the rise and more brick and mortar stores are shutting their doors for good, the retail industry has experienced more scrutiny on sales performance than ever before. Industry experts are spending hours upon hours crunching numbers in order to forecast how much consumers will spend each year during the evolving landscape of holiday shopping.
Now that Black Friday and Cyber Monday have come and gone, we can recap what we have learned from the biggest shopping weekend of the year.
Key Takeaways
- Spending is up. U.S. retailers raked in a record $7.9 billion in online sales on Black Friday and Thanksgiving, up 17.9 percent in 2016. (Adobe Analytics)
- Mobile continues to dominate. More consumers purchased from their smartphones than ever before. 40 percent of Black Friday online purchases were made on mobile devices, up from 29 percent last year. (Reuters) In fact, more than $2 billion dollars were spent from mobile phones and iOS continues to dominate over Android devices. As shopping via mobile device is becoming the norm, this further proves the need for an ecommerce website to be mobile responsive.
- In-Store Shopping is still thriving. Although more consumers shopped online than in years past, in-store sales still experienced impressive numbers. Despite industry experts predicting a sharper decline, store traffic fell by only 1 percent. (ShopperTrak) Perhaps the growth in online sales and steady brick and mortar sales suggest that consumers are choosing to both shop in-store and online this year?
- Amazon. You can’t sum up Black Friday without talking about Amazon. According to Business Insider, Amazon’s online sales during Thanksgiving weekend surpassed all competition, by a wide margin. Among 50 top retailers, Amazon accounted for 55 percent of sales on Black Friday. The Amazon Echo was the best selling product for the online retail giant.
- Communication overload. Retailers wasted no time in filling inboxes and cell phone screens to urge consumers to take advantage of limited-time deals during the Thanksgiving shopping weekend. On Black Friday alone, retailers sent nearly 3 billion emails, more than 82 million SMS and push notifications and collected 8.8 billion data points, like email sign-ups. (AdWeek)
- Cyber Monday sales hit $6.59 billion, the largest-ever online sum for a US shopping day. (CNBC)
- Small Business Saturday and Sunday delivered a combined $5.12 billion in online sales, up 10 percent from 2016. (Adobe Analytics)
- Toy retailers reported that top selling items were Nintendo Switch, Hatchimals, L.O.L. Surprise and ride-on cars for kids. Best-selling electronics include many of the usual suspects: Google Chromecast, Apple iPads, Samsung Tablets, Apple AirPods, and Sony Playstation VR. Games and consoles include Super Mario Odyssey, Nintendo Switch and Microsoft Xbox One X. (Adobe)
Now is the perfect time to get your online business ready for the 2018 holiday shopping season. View our infographic to help your ecommerce business develop a strategic plan for dominating Q4 sales.
Our Strategy and Solutions team is standing by to help you enhance your online experience and maximize revenue. Stop by Miva’s Ecommerce Resource Center for helpful resources for your ecommerce store.
About The Author
Katy Ellquist
Katy Ellquist, Miva’s Digital Marketing Strategist, is an accomplished writer, marketer, and social media analyst who has created sophisticated content campaigns for a broad range of professional clients. She brings to Miva a complex understanding of ecommerce trends and techniques, building upon extensive digital agency experience and a prior role as direct liaison to Miva’s top accounts. Katy is a regular contributor to the Miva blog, covering essential ecommerce topics like design & development strategy, site optimization, and omnichannel selling, with the goal of increasing the actionable knowledgebase of the entire Miva community.
