It is a widely known fact that Thanksgiving and Black Friday are the top shopping days in any given year. The figures to back up the same. But what is more striking and different this year is that a sizeable chunk of the sales has been accomplished through mobile phones...a good one-third of the online spending comes in from there.
PayPal, the most reliable online payment gateway has put forth its numbers and they too reiterate the same that has been put forth by Adobe. The online spending on Black Friday hit a new record high and broke the $3 billion mark this year out of which over $1 comes through mobile devices.
Yet another interesting observation PayPal made was that Black Friday sales topped Thanksgiving sales on a few metrics that were considered crucial. $15,507.00 was the overall payment volume done just per second on Black Friday. $10,781.00 is the overall payment volume per second on Thanksgiving. In short, shoppers spent more on Black Friday in comparison to the amount they spent on Thanksgiving Day.
Latest information from M-Connect Media desk confirms that the sales accomplished through mobiles have occupied a significant 33% in the overall sales recorded for Thanksgiving as well as Black Friday. We can say very clearly that it is the mobile devices that have been widely used by the shoppers to buy their respective products.
This time of the year is definitely a feast to the market researchers and analysts as they confirm the trends and declare the results as to what has been the most sought after trend by people during the festive season of 2016. How much buying did people engage in? Where did they go to for getting the best deals? Very important, what has been the most sought after product during this 2016 holidays? As we cannot get our hands directly on the figures, we can rely on those reliable companies that get delve deep into such matters.
Here are the major findings of Black Friday in terms of statistics:
- When we consider the graph from 2008 through 2016, we can notice that the spending through desktops for retail eCommerce has witnessed a steady growth. The growth is observed in the sales accomplished during Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday. This proves that people moving towards online shopping are on a constant rise.
- Whether it is Thanksgiving or Black Friday, the revenues saw a steady increase year on year making the future look extremely prospective in terms of online sales revenue for businesses.
- Mobile online sales became significant in the year 2013 but doubled up almost by 2016. During this festive season, a good 48% of the sales happened through mobile devices clearly depicting the changing behavior of the shoppers. The transition is smooth yet swift from what it was in the year 2013 to what it is now in 2016.
- When we consider the segments that would enjoy the most number of impulse buys from their respective shoppers, it would be topped by clothing, followed by consumer electronics and then closely followed by games and toys.
- When we consider the traffic from mobile devices for online retail sales during Black Friday 2016, it stands tall at a whopping 65.1% through smartphones and a meager 11.2% through tablets. This is yet another reiteration of the fact of the changing buying patterns of shoppers' year on year.
Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday, definitely a time every year that the entire nation looks forward to, to pamper themselves with the most choices of products at the best of prices. With the advent of the internet, the buying behavior of people had changed. True that we have been witnessing a gradual increase in the number of online shoppers' year on year.
But, now, we have reached a stage where people have started to shop from their smartphones for a product that is worth thousands of dollars too!! This has become the power of technology, the many benefits it bestows the users with!
Virtual Reality and its Future:
The year 2016 is considered as the big year for Virtual Reality and sadly we are in the waiting mode still for it to make a thumping breakthrough. There are quite a number of major players who have released these virtual reality headsets during the recent few months that went by. However, the shoppers did not realize that it would become a major hit in the near future. This lack of excitement around Virtual Reality during Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday made experts revise their forecast for these headsets shipment in a downward direction.
For some products, this festive season could turn out to be a bitter truth but for many others, it definitely is the best season perhaps as a majority of the buying is accomplished through mobile phones, where people just do not have to think twice while they are shopping.
The retailers have indeed left no stone unturned to make the entire festive season irresistible for their shoppers by way of great deals online and offline. The surge in sales could also be probably attributed to the promotions too that helped people engage in more buying behavior during the holiday weekend.
Who emerged the winners during this holiday season?
It is those stores that have a proper representation of their business in every format possible for the specific devices. Whether it is a responsive website design that would remain uncompromising on the resolution wherever it is accessed or it is an application of the business, business owners are ensuring that they make themselves more accessible to their customers. After all, Customer is God, though it may sound extremely cliched.
As more and more sales are being accomplished through mobile and smartphone devices it has become imperative for businesses to either make their presence available for this platform or get a website that would suit any platform. Providing responsive designs is what the experts excel at. However, people still shop from their desktops, laptops, and tablets. One-third of the shopper's segment shop through their mobile phones, which definitely would be a growing trend in the forthcoming years.
Find out from this article from M-Connect Media, which channel, the desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone tops the list in terms of drawing more number of sales. No doubt, the desktop would top the list, but there is an extremely significant chunk of the population that has switched to their mobile phones for shopping. So, retailers, beware! Make yourself more accessible to your customers!