Cyber Monday is complete, and it’s official: Black Friday has unseated Cyber Monday as the year’s biggest digital shopping day. This marks a major milestone in digital commerce, led by two transformational shifts: first, that the holiday shopper has pulled their digital spending forward to Black Friday and second, that retailers (not just consumers) approach Black Friday as a key digital shopping day. That means that neither shoppers nor retailers are waiting for Cyber Monday anymore. Strong apparel growth, specifically 38% growth in active apparel, on Black Friday, helped bolster that day’s expansion. Additionally, Black Friday has become a strong digital day beyond the United States, with Canada, France, Germany and the UK all registering faster growth on Friday than Monday.
Cyber Monday revenue growth this year slowed by nearly ten percentage points, to 16%, compared with last year, while traffic growth to retail sites also slowed by ten percentage points.
Based on historical data and the growth in digital shopping thus far this season, we expect that shoppers have already completed 26% of their holiday shopping…in just the first week of the season. This trend has been made clearer over the past few years, with Cyber Week carrying more and more share of the season’s revenue (even during years, such as this one, where there are more days between American Thanksgiving and Christmas Day). This means that shoppers are pulling their purchases forward, buying earlier in the season, making these first few days even more vital to retailer success.
So, how did Cyber Monday 2016 play out? The weekday, a notoriously “less mobile” day than other big holiday shopping days, was still pretty mobile, with 49% of traffic and 29% of orders on Cyber Monday coming from phones.
Here’s the flash report for digital commerce on Cyber Monday:
Cyber Monday Metric | Value | Compared to Last Year |
---|---|---|
Revenue Growth | 16% | Down from 27% |
Traffic Growth | 15% | Down from 25% |
Mobile Traffic | 49% | Up 18% |
Mobile Orders | 29% | Up 27% |
Average Order Value (AOV) | $98 | Flat |
Discount Rate | 27% | Down slightly from 28% |
Free Shipping | 87% | Down slightly from 88% |
For a wider view of the season, take a look at our predictions.
The shopping flash report provides a snapshot of digital commerce metrics, focusing on the busy Christmas/Holiday Shopping Season. The analysis reflects a comparison of digital commerce sites transacting during both last year’s and this year’s shopping season, across the US, Canada, UK, France and Germany. Times have been normalized to the shopper’s local time. The data presented here is not indicative of Salesforce Commerce Cloud operational performance.