I’m always a little curious about people who shop on Thanksgiving day. Do they jump right from eating pumpkin pie to going online to shop? Thanksgiving is a time to be with your family. Unless you make it a fun family activity (Hey kids, who can find the best deal?), then I don’t really get it.
I seem to be in the minority on this one, as Thanksgiving day sales are rising every year.
Online sales rose 25 percent year to year, according to the latest data out from Adobe, to reach over $1.7 billion – a new record.
That may seem like a bit of a slow down, considering that last year saw growth of 32 percent, with sales topping $1 billion for the first time. However these are early numbers and they will likely rise; in 2014 it was originally estimated that sales had grown only 14 percent. So when all is said and done, the percentage will likely be much higher. The value of the average order grew 5 percent year to year, to $162.
When it came to mobile, the share of online sales was 37 percent, up from 32.3 percent last year, with $640 million spent.
Mobile shopping dominates
What’s most impressive is that, this year, more than half, 57 percent,of all shopping visits came from a mobile device. 43 percent of those visits came from a phone, and only 14 percent came from a tablet. Phones also beat tablets in percentage of online sales, with 22 percent, compared to 14 percent on a tablet.
In all, $380 million was spent on phones, compared to $259 million on tablets.
One area where tablet did win was conversion rate. The iPhone conversion rate was 2.8 percent, and 2.5 for Android. The iPad had a conversion rate of 4.4 percent, and it was 3.6 percent on Android tablets. So, even though phones make many, many more sales, and see a lot more money, tablets are at least better at actually getting people to follow through.
Adobe also broke down where people were finding the best deals, and it’s not for social media, which only had a 1.1 percent referral share. Are stores not advertising on social? Are people not sharing the deals they found? Display ads were barely better, with 1.6 percent.
Instead most people are finding deals either by searching for them, which accounted for 26.2 percent of referrals, or shopper helper sites, which saw 35.6 percent share. Those two combined for 61.8 percent of all referral traffic. The other two big ways were direct sales, with 21.5 percent, and email, with 14 percent.
The takeaway seems to be that, in this case, people trust deals that are coming from reliable sources, rather than people on their social media accounts. This is obviously valuable information for marketers who want to know the best way to get people to their sites.
The other takeaway is that we are taking the idea of deals and extending them further and further. We used to have Black Friday, now people are shopping at the Thanksgiving table. We used to have Cyber Monday, now Walmart is extending it all the way back to Sunday. The question is, when will it end? And if we are always getting deals, do they cease to be deals at all?
Anyway, I gotta run. It’s time go take advantage of those Black Friday deals!
(Image source: pinterest.com)
