America’s
Online
Shopping
Frenzy
Data Reveals Biggest Winners
Report prepared by Joel Zand and Pascal Cohen
Table of Contents
Introduction3
Thanksgiving: It’s Not Just for Turkey Anymore
6
Black Friday: Retailers’ Golden Shopping Day
8
Cyber Monday: The E-Commerce Savings Continue
10
Amazon Prime Day: Jump-Starting E-Commerce in July 13
Mobile Web Traffic
15
Trends for 2015
16
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Introduction
The Christmas holiday shopping season is here, and with it, a blizzard
of online e-commerce activity that U.S. retailers depend upon. Online
competition for consumers’ wallets is fierce. Holiday sales are both a
challenge and an opportunity for e-commerce stores to capture significant
online market share.
In preparation for the 2015 holiday sales season, SimilarWeb analyzed
last year’s holiday Web traffic from America’s leading retailers, as well as
Amazon Prime Day traffic on July 15, 2015. The data offers key insights into
upcoming 2015 online holiday sales, and a deeper understanding for 2016.
SimilarWeb’s data revealed that three days -- Black Friday, Cyber Monday,
and Thanksgiving -- are the most important for retailers because they were
the top three shopping days of the year in terms of volume. Black Friday
2014 delivered nearly 100% more mobile and desktop visits to leading
e-tailers than the average day over the last 12 months. Cyber Monday
showed an 86% increase in web visits over the average day in the last year.
The lesson for online retailers, therefore, is to focus their marketing efforts
on these three specific days over the long Thanksgiving weekend when the
volume of shopper visits is at its annual peak.
Thanksgiving is no longer just a family holiday. With our list of leading
retailers receiving more than 73% more traffic than the average day this
past year, it has become the third most important shopping day of the year,
after Black Friday and Cyber Monday. E-tailers not only need to prioritize
these three days in their marketing plans; they must also add a new
important shopping day to the list.
Significantly, SimilarWeb’s data-driven research found that Prime Day -a newly introduced online shopping day in the middle of July -- was the
fourth busiest shopping day in terms of traffic volume for major online
retailers over the last year, with 179 million combined desktop and mobile
visits. While Amazon created this special sales day, many other retailers
also benefited from it.
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Mobile shopping drives big sales and has become critical to e-tailers’
marketing plans. Roughly 54% of U.S. Christmas season traffic came from
smartphones and tablets last year. Now more than ever before, consumers
gravitate towards mobile convenience, on-the-go efficiency, and quick online
price comparisons when they are shopping at brick-and-mortar stores.
Four big shopping days dominated U.S. Web traffic for American retailers
over the last year. These were Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday, Cyber
Monday, and Amazon Prime Day.
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The Christmas holiday shopping season still dominates with online traffic
on Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday -- driving nearly a 50%
increase over any other day between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and a
85% increase relative to the average day over the last 12 months.
The message to e-tailers is clear: these three super-shopping days are
major sales opportunities and can be used as a springboard to capture
online market share.
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Thanksgiving: It’s Not Just for
Turkey Anymore
Thanksgiving has become the third most important online shopping day of
the year. For generations, consumers made spending time with family and
friends at parades and festive meals a Thanksgiving tradition. Now add to
that tradition online shopping and therefore a new action item for e-tailers
to take advantage of these opportunities.
SimilarWeb’s research revealed that scores of consumers now spend
Thanksgiving online. Consumers spend the holiday previewing Christmas
season shopping deals, and getting a head start on buying holiday gifts
for others and themselves. As a result, retailers need to put significant
resources into ensuring that their marketing strategy includes attracting
and selling to consumers on Thanksgiving Day.
The fact that all Gap brands (Gap, Old Navy, Banana Republic, and Athleta)
are hosted on a single Gap domain helped make the clothing conglomerate
a clear Thanksgiving Day winner last year with a 151% jump in desktop
traffic, and 128% increase in mobile visits. Consumer electronics retailer
Best Buy boosted its Thanksgiving traffic by 118% on mobile and 100% on
desktop. These traffic increases, along with similar surges by Target, J.C.
Penney, Macy’s, Walmart, and Kohl’s, show that consumers aren’t waiting
to shop on Black Friday or Cyber Monday anymore.
Web retailers need to take advantage of this shift in consumers’ purchasing
habits. By promoting online Thanksgiving Day sales early, they can not only
start ringing their cash registers earlier, but also increase brand awareness
and sales momentum over the entire Thanksgiving weekend.
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7/17
Black Friday - Retailers’
Golden Shopping Day
Without a doubt, SimilarWeb’s data analysis reveals that Black Friday has
become U.S. retailers’ most important online shopping day of the year. Last
year saw nearly 275 million visits to leading U.S. online retailers on the day
after Thanksgiving -- more than any other day and close to 100% more
visits than the average day over the last 12 months. Roughly, 52% of this
Web traffic came from mobile devices.
Retailers that showed the biggest one-day online traffic increases weren’t
limited to a particular category. Sporting goods company Nike led Black
Friday mobile traffic increases with a 76% jump, shoe e-tailer Zappos at
72%, home decor company Wayfair at 64%, handmade and vintage items
site Etsy at 57%, followed by women’s and children’s fashion site Zulily at
53%.
With the exception of Nordstrom replacing Zappos, the Top 5 retailers
with the largest one-day increases in Black Friday desktop traffic also
ranked the highest for jumps in mobile traffic.
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9/17
Cyber Monday - The
E-Commerce Savings Continues
Winding down the holiday weekend, Cyber Monday saw even greater online
activity than Thanksgiving in 2014. It is the second biggest U.S. shopping
day in terms of online Web traffic, bested only by Black Friday.
This Web-centric shopping holiday was originally crafted by the U.S.
National Retail Federation. The trade group created the day to spur even
more online retail activity the first Monday after Thanksgiving weekend.
SimilarWeb’s data for last year’s holiday season (below) shows that
Mondays generally had higher Web traffic for retailers than most other
days of the week
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While data for the last weekend in November saw desktop traffic to
online retailers trending downward after Black Friday, Cyber Monday kept
consumers’ hunger for more deals alive.
Two online giants dominated Cyber Monday last year for their sheer number
of visits by U.S. consumers. Together, Amazon.com and eBay.com received
more than 51% of total mobile and desktop traffic that day, receiving nearly
100 million and 35 million visits respectively. The next largest 23 e-tailers
received the other 49% of traffic. These online retail giants weren’t asleep at
the wheel on Thanksgiving and Black Friday either, but they still managed to
keep consumers busy at the end of the long holiday weekend.
Some of the biggest one-day Cyber Monday online traffic surges in 2014 were
seen by computer and electronics e-tailers. Newegg had a 103% traffic boost
on Cyber Monday, while clothing retailer Gap, department stores Nordstrom
and Kohl’s, and Best Buy had one-day traffic increases ranging from 36% 41%.
Significantly, many of these were traditional brick and mortar retailers that
saw busy in-store shopping on Black Friday as well as Saturday and Sunday.
The fact that they secured huge surges in Web traffic, even after the weekend
shopping frenzy, is a testament to the execution of their online marketing
campaigns and strategies.
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12/17
Amazon Prime Day: JumpStarting E-Commerce in July
In a new twist, Amazon created an online shopping event on July 15
this year, roughly 4½ months before the start of America’s Thanksgiving
weekend shopping extravaganza. The special day of savings was only
available to Amazon Prime members who pay a $99 annual membership
fee. Everyone with an Amazon Prime Membership receives free Two-Day
Shipping on eligible purchases, unlimited Prime Instant Video streaming of
movies and TV shows, and the opportunity to borrow many books from
the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library.
Amazon’s clever marketing move in July generated the highest number
of Prime membership sign-ups in a single day. The company’s strategy
prompted Walmart and other American retailers to compete in a summer
online savings showdown. It also drew criticism from some customers
who claimed that Prime Day was nothing more than a garage sale offering
minimal savings on unwanted items.
Amazon, however, was not the only Prime Day winner. Online traffic to
Walmart and Macy’s -- who are big Amazon competitors -- was even
higher. Walmart, whose trademark is “Everyday Low Prices,” poked fun at
Amazon for making customers pay an annual fee to get deals. The Big Box
retailer appears to have done quite well on Amazon’s day.
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14/17
Mobile Web Traffic
During the 2014 holiday season, Americans used their smartphones and
tablets more than half the time to browse the country’s leading retailers’
websites.
Consumers prefer to use their mobile devices to shop during the holiday
season. Many shoppers are likely ‘showrooming’ when they visit traditional
brick-and-mortar stores, a practice where they browse or try on soughtafter goods, but intend to purchase the items for less online.
Retailers can entice shoppers with mobile-focused savings, carefully
targeted social media and mobile-friendly ad campaigns to keep their
mobile e-commerce machines moving forward.
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Trends for 2015
U.S. retailers must plan and develop strategies to acquire their share
of Web traffic before the holiday season arrives. It is critical to focus
marketing efforts on Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday when
shoppers will spend the most time looking for gifts and deals online.
Competition for consumers attention will be at a premium during the two
weeks before Thanksgiving. Successful marketing strategies can increase
retailers’ traffic share during these crucial shopping days.
SimilarWeb’s Digital Insights Team will continue researching online holiday
season e-commerce traffic to U.S. retailers during and after the holiday
season. This analysis highlights actionable insights for retailers in advance
of consumers’ Christmas shopping and retailers’ online holiday marketing
strategies. For more detailed information, contact SimilarWeb’s Digital
Insights Team via [email protected].
The data in this report was compiled from U.S. mobile and desktop Web
traffic for Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday in 2014, in addition
to Amazon Prime Day in 2015 using SimilarWeb’s proprietary marketing
intelligence platform, including market research and analysis.
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SimilarWeb is the world’s
leading digital insight company
SimilarWeb is the market intelligence platform which unlocks the digital
strategy and tactics for any website or mobile app with data spanning over
190 countries.
SimilarWeb was recognized in 2015 as one of Europe’s top 100 fastest
growing companies by Red Herring. Insights gleaned from SimilarWeb are
regularly used by leading publications including Bloomberg Businessweek,
Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch and AdWeek.
SimilarWeb is used daily to help businesses, publishers, marketers, and
analysts to benchmark performance and uncover successful digital
strategies used by millions of websites and apps enabling SimilarWeb’s
users to compete more effectively in the rapidly changing digital world.
SimilarWeb’s thousands of customers worldwide include leading
companies such as Google, eBay, Nike, OLX, and Flipkart
Methodology
Data for this report was obtained via SimilarWeb’s proprietary platform,
including research and analysis for competitive intelligence on the websites
cited. SimilarWeb data comes from 4 main sources:
1. A panel of over 100 million monitored devices, currently the largest
panel in the industry
2. Local internet service providers (ISPs) located in many
different countries
3. Our web crawlers that scan every public website to create a highly
accurate map of the digital world
4. Hundreds of thousands of direct measurement sources from websites
and apps that are connected with us directly
Get More Information
To get free digital metrics about websites and apps — whether your
company’s or those of your competitors — visit SimilarWeb.com
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