Shoppers across the U.S. are now eagerly awaiting packages purchased on "Prime Day," Amazon's self-made, 36-hour shopping holiday that started at 3:00 PM EST on July 16 and ran straight through the stroke of midnight on July 17. We made a few predictions and now are ready to follow-up with some post-Prime Day analysis.
Early reports by Amazon show that this year’s Prime Day was the “biggest global shopping event in Amazon history,” with consumers purchasing more than 100 million products. Adjusted sales over the 36-hour period surpassed Amazon's previous year performance for Cyber Monday, Black Friday, and Prime Day, respectively.
While many post-Prime Day headlines have focused on the categories with the steepest discounts, the impact of the temporary site outage on customer satisfaction, and the inclusion of Whole Foods into this year's event, our goal here is to explore a phenomenon that we saw surface last year: the positive impact on Prime Day across the entire retail industry.
To measure this impact, we turned to shoppers and our own North American Shopping Index, which provides an analysis of retail activity from more than 500 million online shoppers every quarter. (Spoiler alert: Prime Day had a huge halo effect across the industry.) Here are a few key takeaways from Prime Day 2018:
The rising tide lifts all ships
As expected, retailers experienced significant year-over-year growth during Prime Day 2018. Digital commerce revenue grew a whopping 60% compared to the year prior. This was accompanied by a 41% increase in visits and 56% uptick in orders. It's also important to note that these differences reflect the outcomes of a 30-hour event in 2017 compared to this year's 36-hour event. The difference of six additional shopping hours aside, the returns are impressive considering Q2 year-over-year retail growth was just 18% overall.
Creative brands sail ahead
Prime Day 2018 brought out the creativity. More retailers and brands this year took every opportunity to leverage and capitalize on Prime Day buzz in order to engage, connect, and drive loyalty among their own shoppers. To do this, many brands even created custom promotional events of their own. For example, outdoor retailer, EMS proclaimed it "Mountain Day;" active apparel brand, Rhone celebrated "Lime Day;" and Columbia Sportswear touted its own "Cyber Summer" sale. As more brands and retailers start to face steep competition from marketplaces — especially on convenience and price — it's more critical than ever for them to seize every opportunity to highlight uniqueness and quality in their own brand voice.
Retailers dive head first into free shipping
The 23% discount rate offered by retailers on Prime Day may not seem like a lot, but when you factor in free shipping, the savings really do start to add up. On any given Tuesday during the summer, around 63% of orders typically ship for free. On Prime Day 2018, however, that number jumped to 73%. This shows that free shipping has become a new battleground for retailers as they compete with Amazon Prime's key benefit.
The mobile tsunami continues to surge
Shoppers went mobile on Prime Day 2018, as mobile devices accounted for 63% of visits and 43% of orders (up from 57% of visits and 37% of orders in 2017). With mobile quickly becoming the proverbial remote control of our daily lives, retailers have no choice but to optimize and improve their mobile presence in order to compete with the convenience and ease of Amazon's seamless, industry-leading multi-channel shopping experience.
Long story short: Prime Day 2018 was a major shopping event for all retailers. And taking a cue from the incredible success of Alibaba's (also self-created) Singles Day, Amazon has seized a unique opportunity to drive a spike in demand and sales during the typically slow dog days of summer, right before brands and retailers ramp up once again for the back-to-school and holiday seasons ahead.
