This past week has been a big one for retail with major transactions erupting on Black Friday, continuing throughout the weekend, and spiking again during Cyber Monday. As a follow up to our Black Friday analysis, we’ve taken a look at the real-time data in our data warehouse and compared conversion activity on both major dates.
Source: Performance Horizon Data Warehouse, Q4 2016
Here are some of our key learnings and takeaways:
Cyber Monday ABV slightly below Black Friday ABV
The number of conversions on Cyber Monday is just under 85% of the conversions on Black Friday. However, Cyber Monday sales accounted for only about 80% of the economic impact compared to Black Friday. This suggests that retailers experienced slightly lower average basket values (ABV) on Cyber Monday.
Omni-channel retailers are catching up to online-only retailers
Historically, Black Friday was the day for traditional retailers (with both brick & mortar stores and an online presence) to shine whereas Cyber Monday showcased the strength of online-only retailers. Our data warehouse shows that omni-channel retailer conversions drive almost exactly the same economic impact on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. We interpret the data to mean that omni-channel retailers are becoming more successful with their online sales efforts overall and across both Monday and Friday.
Cyber Monday excitement extends globally
Cyber Monday showed transactions that occurred in an even wider variety of number of countries than Black Friday. Conversions in different countries as evidenced by transaction currency (60 versus 53 currencies on Cyber Monday and Black Friday, respectively) included conversions originating from seven more Latin American (Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Peru) and African economies (Morocco, Tunisia, Western Africa) than on Black Friday. Since Cyber Monday is generally associated with online deals, the significant number of currencies is somewhat unsurprisingly given that online shopping does not have the same geographical constraints as brick and mortar locations.
Now that the action from Black Friday and Cyber Monday is tapering off, we hope retailers have a quick chance to breathe before starting to reflect on their learnings and apply their insights from the past week.
If you’re interested in receiving more news and industry trends, be sure to sign up for our monthly newsletter!
