Online Sales and Mobile Track

According to IBM Watson Trend Benchmark live analysis the Total Online Sales for 2015 Black Friday the mobile traffic reached 57 percent of all online traffic. Mobile traffic momentum continued  post mid night to early hours of Small Business Saturday. The Smartphones traffic spread out evenly through the day with a slight upward trend post midnight. While the mobile traffic sustained momentum through the day, the conversion rates peaked in the evening hours for desktop.

A separate research from Deloitte for more than 3000 holiday shoppers shows how smartphone users use smartphones through the day for holiday shopping. Though the mobile traffic exceeded 60 percent for certain data points, on a composite basis Mobile Traffic reached 57.2 percent, up 15.2 percent YOY and mobile formed 36 percent of sales. Walmart reported doubling of sales from mobile and nearly 70 percent traffic originating from mobile.

According to Fernando Madeira, President and CEO, Walmart.com, “Mobile firmly established itself as the dominant shopping trend, for both traffic and sales. Mobile is making up more than 70 percent of traffic to Walmart.com, and now, nearly half of our orders since Thanksgiving have been placed on a mobile device – that’s double compared to last year. Our customers went from previously mostly searching and browsing on mobile, to making purchases at a much higher rate.

“But what was really fun to see were the products that grew the most in popularity from last year. Star Wars toys, 4K HDTVs 50-55”, drones, Xbox One and PS4 video game bundles, iPad Minis and 14-ft. trampolines were among the categories that gained the biggest boost in popularity, and we bought deep in these items to serve customers looking to wrap up those gifts. 2,000 of these and other Cyber Week deals are available on Walmart.com each day through Friday, Dec. 4th.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For Thanksgiving 2015, online sales increased by 43 percent YOY and Black Friday Early Read gives an estimate of 19.6 percent. The early read for Thanksgiving was at 24 percent. According to Channel Advisor, the early read analysis for Black Friday with the details on channels:

 

• Total – e-commerce is set to grow 15 percent YOY and so far for Black Friday the online sales grew at 19.6 percent YOY for Same Store Sales.
• Amazon – Amazon is outperforming the 15 percent benchmark coming in at 19.6 percent.
• eBay – eBay declined  10 percent YOY for the intraday Black Friday period.  eBay tends to be driven by inventory shortages, so we will have to see if this perks up later in the season.  While not in-line with e-commerce, this is the best eBay result we have seen since November of last year.
• CSE – Comparison Shopping Engines were up 11 percent YOY, driven by Google Shopping.
• GS  – Google  Shopping /Product Listing Ads grew at 26.4 percent YOY, PLAs grew at 59.5 percent YOY for Thanksgiving.
• Search – Search grew 2.7 percent YOY for Black Friday early read and at 4.7 percent for Thanksgiving YOY.
• Other 3PM – Other Third Party Marketplaces continued the trend from Thanksgiving and the early Black Friday read has them coming in at 105.1 percent, another very strong showing that is more than 6X the rate of e-commerce.

The sales for the Holiday Season for the last Year shared by IBM.

Key Takeaways For Advertisers

Mobile accounts for a majority of Online Traffic, while conversions are higher from Desktop, making it important for advertisers to optimize their awareness campaigns for Mobile search, while focusing on remarketing campaigns for Desktop.

Shopping Campaigns and Product Listing ads are growing at a faster rate for online sales, making it critical for advertisers to Optimize PLAs for product categories that convert better online, with Click-share optimization.

Store Location and Price Comparison is an important part of Mobile Shoppers Buyer journey, making it important for Brands to add sitelink extensions in search ads that help audiences find a store location and compare prices.

Social Networks are useful for generating referral volume with 40 percent of shoppers using social networks for their holiday shopping. Coupons are one of the preferred digital tools with 45 percent using smartphones to find coupons for holiday shopping.

As high as 43 percent check for Product availability using the Smartphones, making it important for advertisers to update product feed for shopping campaigns. Google and Bing have updated shopping experience for Mobile browsers making it important for advertisers to tag the feed for products to appear for relevant search queries.