Now, even with broadband access, Cyber Monday continues to be a day when retailers pull out big promotions.
Advertisement
Not surprisingly, a lot of the Cyber Monday action happened on mobile devices, although the majority of actual sales still took place on desktop.
But with the number of online shoppers making purchases on mobile devices increasing each year, said Wingo, next year could be the year when a majority of Cyber Monday purchases come from mobile.
It’s too early for sales figures, but Monday is expected to have ben the biggest USA online shopping day ever, likely racing up more than US$3 billion in sales, according to comScore.
Perner also notes that the recent backlash against retailers for beginning Black Friday sales on Thanksgiving has encouraged businesses to keep more brick-and-mortar stores closed and shift the attention to their websites.
Cyber Monday did not go without a hitch, however. Experian-IMRG predicted £943 million will be spent online during Cyber Monday, 31% higher than the £720 million spent a year ago. Each of those thousands of products still remains mystery until now. “While Cyber Monday was still the biggest shopping day of the holiday period, consumers continued 2014’s trend of shopping more aggressively on Thanksgiving, which became the third-biggest shopping day of the Cyber Five weekend”.
As stores and companies prepare promos begin the holiday consumer craze early, the next Cyber Monday could be affected as consumers would then have little to spend when the annual online sale event occurs after the blockbuster deals during Black Friday and before Thanksgiving. Walmart has noticed a sudden spike in online traffic in the past years on the Sunday after the Turkey Day.
The NRF estimated its numbers based on surveys with almost 4,500 shoppers rather than with actual sales numbers from stores.
However, shoppers largely stayed away from stores offering Black Friday bargains following the chaotic scenes of past year, which saw shoppers fight for TVs and other electrical goods. Mobile sales also reached a sales volume record with $799 million of online spending coming from a smartphone or tablet. Social networks referred more than half of shopping traffic, and showed conversion rates of 62%. Amazon’s Fire tablet was the online retailer’s best selling product. The retailer reported it experienced “record setting” sales performance in-store and online.
Advertisement
Target’s website flashed a message saying there was a site error due to unusually high traffic. Mobile accounted for 49% of shopping visits during the day, but only 28% of sales.
