With Christmas only a few weeks away, most of your customers are already doing their holiday shopping and a lot of them begin during Thanksgiving season! Using SimilarWeb Pro we looked at the web traffic of online retailers in America, covering the said period last year. Results showed that Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Thanksgiving are the top three days when web traffic peaked on retailer’s sites.
Black Friday of 2014 brought in 100% more visits (from both mobile and desktop) compared to last year. Meanwhile, Cyber Monday posted an 86% increase in web traffic. Thanksgiving raked in a 73% rise in web visits, making it not only a family holiday but also a shopping one.
The data also revealed a dark horse in the “peak shopping days” competition. A surge in web traffic happened during Amazon’s Prime Day. This is an exclusive day for Amazon Prime members that happens around mid-July. Online retailers also benefited a lot from the fourth busiest shopping day of the year with a whopping 178 million web visits coming from combined mobile and desktop access.
Christmas holiday still remains as the most dominant online shopping season, drawing in more than 85% over the same period last year. But the three shopping days during Thanksgiving weekend serve as a good springboard for e-tailers to leverage the season and gain a huge online market share. Here’s a breakdown of how each shopping day performed last year.
Thanksgiving
Major brands were big winners during Thanksgiving led by Gap brands gaining a 151% increase in desktop traffic and 128% increase in mobile visits. The main advantage of Gap is that all of its brands namely Old Navy, Gap, Athleta, and Banana Republic are hosted in one main site.
Gadget sale is also one of the things that customers anticipate during this period. Thus, it comes as no surprise that electronics retailer Best Buy saw a boost in Thanksgiving traffic by 100% on desktop visits and 118% on mobile traffic.
The same trend was seen at big retailers such as Walmart, Target, J.C. Penney, Macy’s and Kohl’s. Customers were already shopping on Thanksgiving Day and were no longer waiting for Black Friday or Cyber Monday.
Tip for Marketers: Promote Thanksgiving deals early. Send out emails with promo details and discount vouchers. Conduct an exclusive pre-Thanksgiving sale for your loyal customers or big buyers as you try to build momentum for the first day of peak shopping season. Tease your special promos so that your customers know what to expect.
Black Friday
Black Friday is the main online shopping day for U.S. retailers in 2014 with over 275 million visits to these sites. After being stuffed with turkey the day before, people were glued to their computers and mobile devices stuffing their shopping carts the day after.
E-tailers witnessed a 100% increase in site visits compared to any other average day over the past year. It’s worth noting that 52% of that traffic came from mobile devices.
The top five retailers that experienced huge gains in online traffic during last year’s Black Friday were from different categories. This only shows that consumers are really spending time browsing through different sites spotting the best deals available.
Nike led in mobile visits with a 76.1% increase in traffic from sporting goods consumers. Shoe e-tailer Zappos ranked second followed by home décor company Wayfair, handmade DIY items site Etsy, and fashion and lifestyle site Zulily. The same brands are in the top five for desktop traffic as well with the exception of Nordstrom taking the place of Zappos.
Tip for Marketers: Showcase your best deals on Black Friday. Send out countdown emails that week to generate continuous interest. Give your loyal customers an exclusive sneak peek of what awaits them on that day. Go all out and markdown your non-moving items. This is the best day to get rid of your overstocked products and promote the slow-moving ones.
Cyber Monday
You may think that people would be done shopping after they splurge over Thanksgiving and Black Friday. SimilarWeb’s data show that Cyber Monday was actually the second biggest online shopping day in the U.S. following Black Friday!
Two retail giants received the most visits during Cyber Monday last year—Amazon.com and eBay.com. The two sites garnered more than 51% of total desktop and mobile visits that day with Amazon gaining 100 million visits and eBay attracting 35 million. The remaining 49% was split between different retailers.
The brands that received the biggest Cyber Monday traffic surges were Newegg, Gap, Nordstrom, Kohl’s, and Best Buy. Most of these retailers have actual brick and mortar stores. Aside from their in-store sales, customers still bought from them online. This is a testament to their strong online presence and effective online marketing strategy.
Tip for Marketers: Don’t stop promoting. Customers are still looking for last-minute deals. Save some of your biggest sale items for Cyber Monday. Intensify your call to action for your final clearance sale and last day of exclusive offerings.
There’s no reason why you shouldn’t join this 3-day crazy shopping season. Whether you’re offering a product or service, this is the most opportune time to promote them heavily and offer your customers something special. It could be something as simple as giving extra hours of service to something as grand as 80% off on your items for a limited time.
Customers expect great deals during these days and now is your chance to meet or exceed those expectations. Boost your online sales and increase brand awareness through exclusive product offerings. Take advantage of the upcoming Thanksgiving weekend!
You can get the full U.S. retail report of SimilarWeb here.
i-Pepper Virtual Network is the technology partner of SimilarWeb in Asia-Pacific. SimilarWeb is a global leader in web measurement specializing in online competitive intelligence. For more information about SimilarWeb, contact [email protected]
Great info, with this we learned a lot in improving site visits and sales during these peak seasons. We need to pay more attention with the traffic and giving out better deals than our competitors on our site thanks for the post!
With right promotions at the correct timing or season we can boost productivity of an online business. The key to boosting online business is to have a good marketing and advertising scheme.
Good info. It’s really good sharing your knowledge how to boost your online business. Especially peak seasons, there are a lot of customers who will definitely buy something for their special someone. Yes correct, don’t stop promoting.Good discounts will catch the customers attention. Because a good shopper is a wise saver.
Interesting information, early promotions would definitely help in boosting online sales and having good last minute deals will ensure a good amount of sold goods
Great! Now e-business owners can create their business plan ahead of time to boost their sales.
Good strategies and tactics will surely increase the sales of online business.