We take stock of Black Friday and Cyber Monday and point to a 41% increase in revenue compared with 2019
Black Friday has just ended, and at Trilogi, a leading eCommerce agency with more than 20 years of experience, we’ve taken stock of sales across 140 eCommerce stores currently using the platform our agency markets. Time to see whether our Black Friday 2020 predictions came true. How did consumers behave this year? Did sales rise as expected? Did Cyber Monday beat Black Friday?
2020 has been shaped by the coronavirus pandemic, and with restrictions on physical retail, eCommerce has played a growing role throughout the year, with new user segments emerging that had never bought online before or shown any interest in doing so.
Black Friday was the acid test for the consolidation of eCommerce. According to the data we collected, based on a sample of 140 eCommerce stores and 37,746 orders, there was a 57% increase in orders compared with 2019 during the period from November 23 to 30, the week of Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
The data also shows that revenue rose 41% over the whole Black Friday week, growing steadily as November 27 approached. On D-Day itself, Black Friday, sales rose by more than 16% in revenue and more than 28% in orders, before leveling off over the weekend, with a smaller increase than during the rest of the week.
The most surprising figure came on Cyber Monday, when sales rose 50% compared with last year, almost matching Black Friday’s sales. Are we looking at the new Black Friday? With discounts similar to Black Friday’s, Cyber Monday sales soared. On a day traditionally reserved for the tech sector, other sectors didn’t want to miss the chance to extend their deals or even offer better discounts.
At Trilogi we note that, across the sample of 140 eCommerce stores, this year consumers placed more orders but reduced their average Black Friday spend by 10% compared with 2019.
The pandemic brought a segment of users who had never bought online before into the online channel. Did the same trend continue this Black Friday? According to the data from this period, 50% of consumers were new users who had never bought before, confirming the trend and once again consolidating online sales.
User behavior when buying online varies depending on the device they use to view deals. Our analysis confirms mobile’s lead in driving traffic, but desktop is still the preferred channel for placing orders when purchases are more considered: 53% of orders during the Black Friday period were made on this device, followed by mobile devices at 45%. This reinforces the trend of focusing digital marketing for new user acquisition on mobile, without neglecting the desktop channel, which remains the favorite for online purchases. Even so, mobile devices are steadily gaining importance, and in recent years the share of conversions via mobile has kept growing.
