5 Epic Stats from Black Friday and Cyber Monday

With the dust from the two biggest shopping dates of the year settling, Matthew Martindale highlights some post carnage stats.
We knew it was coming. We all prepared. Retailers stocked their shelves (digital or physical) and web hosts laid down sandbags. With more global retailers than ever getting involved, the Black Friday / Cyber Monday combo was bound to be a bumper one!
With Amazon witnessing an 83% increase in traffic on last Black Friday, it was a pretty great period across the board for retailers selling online. We’ve highlighted our favorite stats from a crazy few days of festive sales and bargains aplenty (no rioting here though!):

1 Abandonment Rates Fell

SaleCycle clients saw a drop in abandonment rates on both Black Friday (down by 8%) and Cyber Monday (down by 5%) compared with their daily averages. With time-based offers and limited stock levels, customers made an effort to complete their orders as soon as possible to avoid any disappointment.

Despite the lower abandonment rate on Black Friday, the massive increase in volumes meant SaleCycle clients sent over 200% more remarketing emails (compared with a typical Friday) leading to a record level of recoveries (see stat 2!).

2 Conversions and Recoveries Rose by 120%

With IMRG calculating that retail websites saw 181 million visits on Black Friday, beating their prediction by nearly 50%, it was an ideal setting for a peak day for online retailers.
On Black Friday, SaleCycle clients with Email Remarketing and On-Site Remarketing programs recovered over 120% more orders than a typical Friday (!) with the number an equally impressive 105% on Cyber Monday.

Emails were opened. Buttons were clicked. And lots of lovely Christmas presents were bought!

3 Shopping ‘Til They Drop

Determined to take advantage of every minute of Black Friday, customers shopped as late as they could; with traffic peaking between 8pm and 10pm. Thanks to the 24 hour nature of the internet, there were more than double the number of customers shopping at midnight than on a typical Friday!
Fast forward to Cyber Monday evening and we found customers fighting to make use of the last hours of discounts returning in their droves via remarketing emails. Starting with a build up of clicks from emails at 3pm, between 7pm and 11pm SaleCycle saw our highest ever levels of recoveries for three solid hours!

4 You’ve Got Mail! Remarketing Email Sends Increased by 200%

PayDay Fridays are always a busy time for online shopping, but Black Friday saw the number of recovery emails sent to shoppers double! With a peak in abandonments around lunchtime, shoppers returning home in the evening were greeted with their personalized reminder emails, leading them back to continue their spending sprees.

We also saw a boost to click throughs from our emails across all our clients, some retailers taking the chance to optimize their email templates with Black Friday and Cyber Monday reminder banners. With a boost to email volume and links, everything was in place for the 115% increase in click through rate that we saw.

5 More People Shopped on Black Friday than on Cyber Monday

Finally, the biggest news is that Black Friday trumped in the battle between two of the peak sales days of the year with 76% more sales than Cyber Monday!
Amongst SaleCycle’s clients, we saw just under twice as much growth in direct sales on Black Friday; seeing 340% more compared to a typical day and Cyber Monday seeing an increase of 188%.  It’s worth noting that Cyber Monday did have a higher hourly peak however with customers getting in the last of the best deals of the season.

We weren’t alone either; Amazon had its busiest day ever on Black Friday – beating the record previously held by Cyber Monday 2013. Black Friday and Cyber Monday weren’t the only days of note; a newcomer started to assert itself at the end of the weekend…

! BONUS: The Rise of Sofa Sunday

As we discussed last week, Sofa Sunday grew again this year with an 89% increase on sales in comparison to a typical Sunday. The prediction that its busiest peaks would be between 9pm and 11pm came true and in fact started a little earlier with 8pm starting the spike.