Black Friday: a tradition for many of us, and a perverse curiosity for the rest. Ultimately, though, it is really an interesting bellwether of what’s going on in the U.S. economy. Here’s what we learned this season.
Takeaways via Black Friday 2016
#1 Online Sales Up…Sites Weren’t (Always).
This year, sales from eCommerce hit a record-breaking $3 billion. The reality that sales were pretty significant really should not be a shock to anyone, but yet they did manage to catch some retailers by surprise. To be fair, this happens every year. In 2014, it had been Best Buy; last year, Target and Neiman Marcus experienced issues. This year, Macy’s fell culprit; during the mid-part of the day, website visitors were greeted with a “temporary shopping jam!” message, leaving many irate complaints on Twitter.
Lesson to be learned: if you’re an eCommerce retailer, make sure to stress test your website to the ultimate. It’s far better to put money into testing than to lose hundreds or thousands of transactions, right?
#2 Mobile is the Real Deal.
Not to be outdone, mobile sales surpassed $1 billion. To put that in perspective, it had been the first day in the history of U.S. retail where mobile sales beat $1 billion. That’s further evidence that transacting via simpler interfaces optimized for mobile is what customers want for just about every product category.
#3 Cyber Monday is undoubtedly an Outdated Term.
Amazon reported that it has more mobile sales on Thanksgiving 2016 than on Cyber Monday of last year. Why? Because consumers don’t care about silly, opportunistic mini-event names like “Cyber Monday” when they can get similarly good deals on other days in November.
That’s not to say sales won’t come in on Cyber Monday; far from it. Adobe Digital Insights’ principal analyst and director Tamara Gaffney expects internet sales to hit $3.36 billion on Monday, making it the most significant online sales ever.
#4 Where Do Tablets Fit In?
Most mobile traffic on Black Friday stemmed from smartphones; 56% of all traffic, to be exact. However, 47% of the overall total originated from smartphones, with only 9% coming from tablets. In terms of sales, only 11% of the total originated from tablets.
Given that app and website developers have been developing tablet-rich interfaces for years, there’s an honest question about how much time anyone should really be spending optimizing for tablets, when they are not making up a good chunk of the sales pie.
#5 Sales Up; Backlash Up Too.
While millions of Americans hit the mall, plenty more went for the #OptOutside for the second year consecutively. The campaign, launched by outdoor retailer REI a year ago, saw approximately 2.7 million consumers pledge to participate, making the most of free rides to parks in five cities along with free park admission in 13 different states. REI’s practicing what it preaches, giving roughly 12,000 staffers the day off for free so they could #OptOutside as well.
We decided to stay in for Back Friday this year, we did not want to get caught up in all the madness. What did you do this Black Friday? Did you see any really good deals? We would love to hear from you. To leave us your comments, simply click here
