Shoppers on Black Friday are becoming more selective – with a decrease in the number of retailers seeing an uplift in Black Friday sales, but an increase in the purchase volumes seen at those selected stores.
Littledata looked at the traffic and online sales of 84 ecommerce websites* over the Black Friday weekend (four days from Friday to the following Monday), compared with the rest of the Christmas season (1st November to 31st December).
63% of the surveyed retailers saw a relative increase in traffic on Black Friday weekend 2015 versus the remainder of the season, compared with 75% of the same retailers seeing traffic rise on Black Friday 2014. This implies some decided to opt out of Black Friday discounting in 2015 or got less attention for their discounts as other retailers spent more on promotion.
The same proportion of retailers (60% of those surveyed) also saw a doubling (on average) in ecommerce conversion rate** during Black Friday 2015. In 2014, over 75% of retailers saw an improved conversion rate during Black Friday, but the median improvement over the rest of the season was just 50%.
61% of websites also saw an increase in average order value of 16% during Black Friday 2015, compared with only 53% seeing order values increase the previous Black Friday.
We predict that this trend will continue in 2016, with a smaller number of websites benefiting from Black Friday sales, but a greater increase in ecommerce conversion rate for a select few.
Be sure to check back for what the actual trends will be for 2016! Let us know what you think below or get in touch!
* The surveyed websites were a random sample from a group which got a majority of their traffic from the UK or the US. The data was collected from Google Analytics, and so represents real traffic and payments.
** The number of purchases divided by the total number of user sessions
Image credit: HotUKDeals
