The first set of results are in. We’re not sure that these days will be representative of the entire season as in past years but we’ll take any good news we can get.
According to Comscore Black Friday sales were flat:
For the holiday season-to-date, $10.41 billion has been spent online, marking a 4-percent decline versus the corresponding days last year, while Black Friday saw $534 million in online spending, up 1 percent. For the combination of Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday, online sales were up 2 percent relative to last year.
We told several of our retail clients that third party payment options could be an important deciding factor this holiday season because consumers were going to be extra cautious with their credit cards. PayPal saw sales rise 26 percent on Black Friday. PayPal said its sales numbers reflected 12 percent of all U.S. e-commerce.
According to CoreMetrics:
The online retail sector in general registered drops in ecommerce activities… The number of page and product views across the online retail sector in general was down 8.55 and 8.29 percent respectively compared to Black Friday 2007, suggesting that online retailers are doing a poor job of directing people to browse through their selection of products. The 18 percent drop in average session length also demonstrates that retailers are struggling to keep customers on their sites. Retailers are having difficulty in converting visitors to buyers, as evidenced by weakness in shopping cart and order sessions percentages.
How was your Black Friday?
- As a consumer, did you spend a lot and get great deals?
- As a merchant were your sales encouraging or depressing?
Today is CyberMonday, there is still some time to make changes to your site so that you get the most sales this holiday season. Will you wait and see how the rest of the holiday season treats you or will you take action today?
