Tag Archive for: holiday shopping trends

Final Results Of Black Friday Shopping 2018

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Consumers took Black “Friday” by storm this year setting ground-breaking records with the largest online presence in its history. 2018’s Black Friday shopping festivities also started earlier than ever. Right after Thanksgiving dinner, consumers everywhere jumped straight to their cellphones to begin their holiday shopping. SalesForce reported that peak sales times were between 8 to 10 pm and started ramping up as early as 4 pm local times. Black Friday was also the first day ever to see more than $2 billion in sales coming from smartphones alone. According to MarketingLand, a record $6.22 billion was recorded in online sales for Black Friday — an increase of 23.6 percent from last year.

 

An Adobe Analytics spokesperson shares more on the trend of online shopping on Thanksgiving day over the past several years:

“We attribute this to many consumers being on the road or with family during the holiday, and they’re using this time to shop (often via mobile). The takeaway for marketers is there’s an opportunity to market to consumers on and around Thanksgiving Day – not only the traditionally known shopping holidays like Cyber Monday and Black Friday.”

 

What’s New This Year

Another rising trend in the year of 2018 holiday shopping thus far has been buying online and picking up your purchase in-store. The growth in this shopper has risen 73 percent from Thursday to Friday, which can be credited mainly to stores being closed on Thanksgiving day. Nevertheless, this is a trend gaining ground quickly and presents an opportunity for marketers to capitalize on and make easier for consumers.

More than one-third of online Black Friday sales were made on smartphones surpassing last year’s 29.1 percentage of online purchases. $2.1 billion were done in sales this year via smartphone on Black Friday, completely shattering the record set last year on Cyber Monday at $1.4 billion. The trend of smartphone shopping is here to stay and will only continue to increase every single year.

 

Why These Sales Are Important

Holiday shopping is just getting started! While 2018 Black Friday and Small Business Saturday shopping is in the books, Cyber Monday kicked off today and is predicted to be the largest online shopping day in history. The opportunity here is recognizing the importance of mobile to consumers in today’s holiday shopping adventures. The companies that place their efforts in developing an extremely user-friendly mobile interface will be very successful with their consumers. It is also recommended to pace your holiday sales throughout the holiday seasons instead of focusing solely on Black Friday or Cyber Monday.

Digital Shopping Trends to Watch Out for this Holiday Season

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The Holiday Season is right around the corner, and that means it’s time to develop marketing strategies to prepare for the increased traffic. According to Google, “U.S. retail eCommerce sales are expected to increase 15.8% during the 2017 holiday season.” Moreover, this demonstrates the impact that Holiday shopping has on businesses and the importance of digital preparation. Listed below are some digital shopping trends to watch out for this Holiday Season.

Mobile continues to dominate
It’s not much of a surprise that mobile shopping is still dominating online purchases, as this pattern appears to continue in the near future. Adobe announced last year that “mobile accounted for 50% of website visits during the Holiday Season and 30% of all online sales during that period from Nov 1 – Dec 11.” It’s evident that shoppers during the Holiday Season and in general are reliant on their mobile devices in terms of product comparisons, making quick purchase decisions, convenience, etc. Therefore, as a marketer mobile optimization is critical and needs to be a major focus during the season of Holiday shopping.

Voice search on the rise
The use of voice searches has been an increasing digital trend and continues to be a focus for marketers moving forward. According to Google, “about 50% of U.S. teens and 41% of adults use voice search daily through AI such as Siri, Alexa, Cortana, and Google Assistant.” Artificial intelligence (AI) is continually evolving and changing the scope of digital marketing tactics.  From an SEO perspective, it should be noted that search queries for voice differ from typical text searches. Optimizing for “conversational language” and longer keyword phrases are two aspects that marketers should be focusing on. Ultimately, the use of voice search for shopping implications will be huge this Holiday Season and it’s essential for marketers to focus on this trend.

Focus on shareable social media content
With increased activity on social media channels during the Holiday Season, having engaging content is key. Creating content that is “shareable” is an effective way for businesses to reach potential consumers. A few tactics of shareable content include referral codes, influencer involvement, in-store incentives, giveaways, contests, etc. Generating valuable and optimized blog content to share on social platforms is another beneficial strategy. Essentially, keying in on social media engagement is beneficial in general, but especially important during the Holiday Season.

Online spending projected to outperform in-store purchases
It’s being predicted that for the first time in history e-commerce sales will outperform in-store sales during the 2017 Holiday Season. Deloitte predicts that “51% of all dollars spent this Holiday Season will be online and 42% will be spent in store. The other 7% will be contributed from catalogs and direct mail drivers. They also project an “18 to 21 percent increase in revenue for online retailers from last year.” In the end, although these are just predictions, there’s no denying how popular online shopping has become during the Holidays and this trend isn’t going away anytime soon.

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