Previously we provided five predictions for Black Friday/Cyber Monday. Having analysed the results across the network, we are now in a position to see how accurate those predictions were…
New advertisers getting involved
There were a number of new advertisers getting on board the trend. This contributed to exceptional performance over Black Friday and Cyber Monday. There is an excellent write up of how this period panned out on Internet Retailing.
Black Friday to be the biggest yet
Black Friday was absolutely huge. For the first time ever across the network Black Friday was even bigger than Cyber Monday and was 135.4% up on what we witnessed in 2013. Some interesting stats for Black Friday include:
- Across the network we generated 58 clicks per second
- 247 transactions took place each minute
- £1,304,408 of revenue was generated for our advertisers each hour
A number of sectors saw strong performance with department stores leading the way. John Lewis has reported that Black Friday week has broken all records as the peak trading period for them.
The chart below indicates how 2014 compared to 2013 in terms of hourly sales:
Mobile traffic to overtake desktop
We didn’t quite see mobile traffic overtake desktop traffic although it was incredibly close. Black Friday saw 45.78% of traffic originate from a mobile device however the peak came a couple of days later on Sunday 30th with 48.78% of traffic through a mobile device.
There were periods throughout the day where mobile traffic exceeded that of desktop and we saw consumers preferred device change throughout the day. Smartphone traffic peaked between 07:00 and 08:00 while desktop was between 09:00 and 10:00. Tablets were the device of choice in the evening with traffic peaking between 21:00 and 22:00.
Additional peaks later in the month
It is a little too early to see if this prediction was correct but we have seen a strong start to December. We still expect to see some additional peaks later this month and also predict strong post-Christmas performance as consumers take advantage of further sales over this period.
High average order values as consumer confidence grows
Average order values increased even further on Black Friday compared to last year. This was up to £88.17 from £84.52 last year. Just as with last year, we saw higher AOV on Black Friday than we did on Cyber Monday. With massive discounts on high ticket items, consumers were prepared to spend more on a number of bargains.
Our highest transaction value on Black Friday was £11,878 for Wex Photographic where a customer bought a high end camera and a number of accessories.