Pascal Cohen, SimilarWeb’s Digital Insights Manager for Europe, says: “While big e-tailers like Amazon and eBay saw declines in Cyber Monday traffic, consumers were jumping on their mobiles to shop at United Kingdom retailers like Boots, Sainsburys, John Lewis, as well as Marks and Spencer”. And they did it in a big way, too.
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With mobile devices fast becoming the prime shopping platform for Americans, major retailers targeted their marketing efforts throughout the Black-Friday-to-Cyber-Monday shopping flurry directly at consumers’ phones and tablets. Online sales make up 10 percent of overall retail sales, but that increases to 15 percent before Christmas as online shoppers snap up discount deals, according to research firm Forrester. Yet “Cyber Monday” has become engrained in the minds of enough shoppers and it endures as the top online spending day of the year. According to research firm ShopperTrak, sales at retail stores dropped by 10% to $10.4 billion this year, compared to 2014. The information underscores the progressing movement in shopping on the web, which compensates for abating spending in stores. Instead of slowing down online shopping on Cyber Monday, this past weekend of digital shopping seems to have stoked the fire. Cyber Monday certainly brings out the deals, but do people really take advantage of them? Target TGT also saw record sales growth thanks to its online promotions.
Target said on Friday it had “unprecedented results on Target.com” on Thanksgiving Day, and the company planned to offer free shipping on Target.com through December 25.
Target’s record-setting influx of online shoppers proved to be trouble for the retailer, which had to limit access to the site for some customers to ease congestion.
Bastain sent an email in which the company was apologizing to guests and shoppers who were experiencing delays, encouraging them to try again later, and saying the company appreciated their customer’s patience. Social networks referred more than half of shopping traffic, and showed conversion rates of 62%.
Jeff Rutherford, media relations consultant, “desperately” wants a Gmail plug-in to delete every Cyber Monday and Black Friday promotional email.
Security researchers at Cheetah Mobile have found more than 30 manufacturers with Trojan-infected tablets for sale on Amazon and thousands have allegedly been shipped to customers. “It’s much higher than we’ve ever seen”.
More than a quarter of online purchases Monday were made on a smartphone or tablet, and over 75 percent of those sales were made with an Apple device.
According to IBM, during the weekend, handheld devices were the preferred method of making an online purchase. Mobile accounted for 49% of shopping visits during the day, but only 28% of sales.
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IBM reported that mobile traffic almost matched that of people checking out online sales from their desktops. “This means retailers without a strong online presence, such as Primark, will pool all their deals and resources around Black Friday instead”.
