With a fast start to the season, many wondered if Black Friday has become the new Cyber Monday. What was once largely a single-day event, Cyber Monday has grown into ‘the Cyber Six,” as online order growth spreads across the first six days of the peak season. That said, as a one-day online sales bonanza, Cyber Monday is still the granddaddy of them all in the US.
Growth Metrics Jump
Last year, Cyber Monday accounted for 8.3% of all Christmas holiday shopping orders, beating Black Friday’s 6.4% share of the season’s orders – meaning that roughly 30% more orders were placed on Cyber Monday. This year, there was certainly a larger base – a bigger Black Friday – to build on, and Cyber Monday again didn’t disappoint, with 47% more orders placed over last year. Year-over-year, the other key metrics were higher too, with 28% more visits and 44% more baskets created. This year, Cyber Monday was roughly 25% bigger than Black Friday. So, yes, online shopping is spreading across the week, and Black Friday is playing a larger role than before.
Conversion rate on Cyber Monday soared this year, up 15% over last year, driven by mobile’s 27% conversion rate improvement. Conversion rate actually peaks late in the evening, at 10pm.
Flash Stat: Cyber Monday beats Black Friday as shoppers convert at a 21% higher rate.
Mobile Monday
Mobile continued to drive shopping, as phones accounted for 41% of all traffic, 35% of baskets created and 22% of orders. Year-over-year, visit share on phones was up 36% and order share up 54%. Similar to last year, mobile order share on Monday was below Friday’s level, as Monday shoppers tend to bounce back towards computers, even if just for the day.
Flash stat: Tablets continue to tank as shopping devices; order share was down 14% over last year.
Peak Shopping Times
When was shopping hottest? Shopping happens late on Cyber Monday:
…for traffic: 8pm
…for orders: 8pm
…for conversion rate: 10pm
…for phone traffic: 8pm
…for phone orders: 9pm
…for phone conversion rate: 11pm
Flash Stat: Cyber Monday features two ‘peaks’ one in the morning, which is primarily driven by computers from 10am-1pm and a mobile-driven evening peak from 8-10pm.
Free Shipping and Discounts
This year, 87% of Cyber Monday orders shipped for free, besting last year’s mark of 83% and a bit higher than the 85% of orders that shipped for free on Black Friday this year.
As we wrote yesterday, discounts typically rise during the Christmas/Holiday season. This year, the average discount rate of 26% was double that of the Q3 average discount.
With the Cyber Six in the books, stay tuned for additional flash reports monitoring the shopping season’s progress. And, for additional data-driven trends across digital commerce, read the quarterly Demandware Shopping Index.
* Discount rate is calculated as the discount on merchandise purchased and does not include items already on markdown.
The shopping flash report provides a snapshot of digital commerce metrics, focusing on the busy Christmas/Holiday Shopping Season. The analysis reflects a comparison of digital commerce sites transacting during both last year’s and this year’s first five shopping days, across the US, Canada, UK, France and Germany. Times have been normalized to the shopper’s local time. The data presented here is not indicative of Demandware’s operational performance or its reported financial metrics, including GMV growth and comparable GMV growth.