I know you’ve been waiting with bated breath all holiday season to find out which of the made-up online shopping holidays would be the winner—Cyber Monday for the first time ever? Green Monday again? Brown Monday? Purplish-Blue-Like-a-Bruise Monday? Sadly, none of the above. Nope, it was some no name: Tuesday, December 15 . Coming from behind, that all-but-forgotten day of the week topped the online revenue charts for the first time with $913M in sales. That’s right, nearly one billion dollars in revenue online in one day—and yes, that would be the record for the most online spending in a single day, ever. 2009 Holiday Season To Date vs. Corresponding Days* in 2008 Non-Travel (Retail) Spending Excludes Auctions and Large Corporate Purchases Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations Source: comScore, Inc
Posts tagged ‘shopping’
Deloitte’s 2009 State of the Media Democracy report was released today. Unsurprisingly, it reports that TV has become more popular in the struggling economy (beating out other forms of entertainment). But the big news might be two of the “lesser” findings—about online recommendations and the mobile Internet. Online recommendations are becoming increasingly influential, especially compared with online advertising. Online advertising doesn’t stack up against its offline counterparts—83% of those surveyed cited TV advertising as having an impact on their buying decisions, but less than half mentioned online advertising among their top three. Even clicking through to another site has dropped from 72% to 59% over the last three years. (Only half would click more on more targeted ads, down from two-thirds last go round.) Online recommendations and reviews, on the other hand, are on the way up: Over half of all U.S. consumers and 69 percent of Millenials believe that online customer reviews and ratings influence their buying decisions more than any other type of online advertising, and 51 percent have purchased products based on an online recommendation. In fact, 24 percent of U.S. consumers would like to have an online service that recommends a product based on other consumers’ preferences. Meanwhile, the mobile Internet is making great strides in separating the Internet from the perception of a desktop. Of those surveyed, a third used their phone as “an entertainment device” and nearly half (47%) of smart phone owners say their phone is one of their three “most valuable” media/entertainment products (up from 20% last year). 48% of those surveyed have data plans, and nearly all of them (88%) are using their phones to access the Internet. (The rest are paying too much .) Shopping is already making headway on the mobile Internet—15% have purchased something on their phones. Also popular: texting, online search, downloading apps and online GPS. Clearly, both of these findings show us how the Internet is spreading not only in influence but in accessibility. What do you think? How can better you use online recommendations to your or your clients’ advantages? Are you ready for the mobile Internet?
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Online Recommendations > Advertising
The results are in: Cyber Monday (and Black Friday) = success ! The numbers are actually up from last year, despite the state the economy is still in. And according to Hitwise, social sites helped to drive sales. (Yeah, FOR REAL.) Their data shows that not only was US traffic up to social sites over the holiday weekend, but downstream traffic to online retailers was also up—especially to Amazon (Cyber Monday winner), Wal-Mart (Black Friday winner), Target, Best Buy and Toys R Us. Wal-Mart also saw the highest increase in downstream traffic from Twitter (among the Retail 500 that Hitwise tracks). However, let me just pull out my favorite wet blanket—sort of. Let’s see, how can I put this? #1—Cyber Monday is a made-up holiday. Nobody outside of Internet marketing/retailing has ever heard of it and it has nothing to do with their shopping patterns. However, there’s good news here, too. We are a nation (world?) of procrastinators—and another day is actually the biggest (revenue-wise) online shopping day of the year—and it’s yet to come . The thinking behind Cyber Monday, created in 2005, was that workers returning from their Thanksgiving holiday would use the Internet to do a lot of their holiday shopping. (At work? Don’t they have the Internet at home, where they have all those glossy ads from stores to compare prices? Were they too lazy/agoraphobic to go out on Black Friday? (Hey, no worries, me too.) Clearly, the logic behind this “holiday” was always flawed.) Two years ago, it was “ Green Monday ” (although now there seems to be some confusion as to whether that label applies to the first or second Monday in December)—with $881M in online sales (versus $733 on Cyber Monday, tied for tenth among the big online sales days in 2007). Last year, it was the day after Green Monday, with $887M (versus $846M on Cyber Monday)—but with this year’s Cyber Monday total the same as last year’s highest sales day (and last year’s highest sales day only a 1% increase over the year before), could we hope for anything higher?
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Social Sites Help eCommerce (and Your Annual Reality Check)
All of the talk of how things were on ‘Black Friday’ is now followed by the yearly quest for the Cyber Monday data. We in the online world love to see just how much the shift to online commerce continues to overtake the traditional way that goods and services are sold. Whether these numbers are inflated or given too much credit is always a concern but this year’s trends, at least from a few sources, points to the continued rise of online growing while brick and mortar struggles. To what degree this year’s trending points to a larger economic trend is a huge TBD (to be determined). Honestly, more people may have experimented with online purchasing to save time and money including gas and food that is part of the in-store shopping experience of a venture out on Black Friday. That’s just my thought and there is NO scientific backing on that one. As for more ‘official’ statistics, Retailer Daily sums it up this way Both annual consumer spending and traffic levels went up on “Cyber Monday”, according to third-party research results. Consumers’ interest in shopping online appeared to carry over from “Black Friday” last week, when e-commerce sales increased at a significantly higher rate than brick-and-mortar sales. Here are a few highlights from the Coremetrics Cyber Monday 2009 report (PDF) : E-commerce sales were 13.7% higher on Cyber Monday this year than they were last year Average dollar amount spent by consumers per online order rose 38.2%, from $130.24 to $180.03 Apparel retailers and jewelry retailers drove this increase with 26.4% and 14.3% jumps in average dollar amount spent per online order, respectively. Sporting goods segment, retailers reported a nearly 55% increase in new site visitors, but a 3.1% decline in average dollar amount spent per online order. Department store retailers reported a 33% increase in new site visitors, but a nearly 10% decrease in the average value of each online order. Per order, consumers purchased 30% more items this year than they did last year. November 2009 American Express Spending and Saving Tracker reports that this e-commerce surge may trend though the holiday season 79% of overall respondents plan to use the internet as a tool for holiday shopping 45% plan to purchase items online 28% will use the internet to buy hard-to-find items 27% will use the internet for product research 25% will go online for gift ideas One particularly interesting piece of data is around the projected use of mobile in the holiday shopping experience is on the rise. According to the Deloitte 24th Annual Holiday Survey, 19% of consumers plan to access the internet via their mobile phones while shopping to find store locations, obtain coupons and sales information, as well as research products and prices. This percentage rose to 39% in the 18 to 29 age group. So do we dare take this information and say that the economy is truly on the rebound and rosier days are ahead for all? Probably not a good idea. I guess the solace that can be taken is that if there is one industry in the marketing world that is at least going to stay afloat during these rough times it’s the Internet marketing segment. Maybe we should just count those blessings and move on. Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!
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The Cyber Monday Data Is Here!
Let’s face it this holiday season is a pivotal one for all of us from a macro point of view. While many retailers will be focused on their individual bottom lines it will be important to look at how this whole ‘first weekend’ of the holiday shopping season plays out from start to finish with the latest entry, Cyber Monday, happening as you read this. First the good news. Online sales for Black Friday were up 11% over last year according to comScore and the rest of November was an improvement over the prior year. Let’s remember, though, that last year’s holiday season was on the heels of “Bailout 1” and waiting for a new president to be inaugurated. In other words, last year sucked so any improvement over those numbers needs to be tempered. Overall, meaning the performance of the Black Friday weekend in total, was less heartening in that it appears that people are intent on spending less and there was virtually no increase in spending overall from last year. Yahoo News reports Consumers spent significantly less per person at the start of the holiday season this weekend, dimming hopes for a retail comeback that would help propel the economy early in 2010. Consumers said they will have spent nearly 8 percent less on average, or about $343 per person, over the weekend that includes Thanksgiving, Black Friday and runs through Sunday, according to the NRF (National Federation of Retailers). Traffic to stores and websites rose to 195 million people from 172 million in 2008, but shoppers were focused on buying low-priced items, like $10 toys and $9 books, the NRF said. Total spending for the holiday weekend rose to an estimated $41.2 billion, up 0.5 percent from a year earlier, NRF said. Since I am not a prognosticator I am not going to offer some thoughts on where this will all go. What I will say is that this will not be the time for irrational exuberance over numbers that look nice in a silo. This season is about online and offline together and if there is little or no increase (or even a decrease) in spending then we are looking at some interesting times ahead.
As I mentioned yesterday, I love Bing’s shopping engine . In no small part because I can earn some serious cashback . As long as I make sure I’m getting the lowest price in the first place, the cashback makes it worth using Bing. So, Google Product Search can wave all the new fancy features in front of me that it wants, if I ain’t getting a kickback, I ain’t using Google! OK, maybe some of you aren’t quite so price conscious as me. Maybe for you, shopping is more about the journey, than the destination. If that’s the case, you’re going to love the scenery Google just added. First, we have a new gallery view: We also have new review summaries: Nearby stores: Video product reviews and a mobile friendly interface complete the list of new features. But, what it doesn’t have is this: And, until it does, I’m sticking with Bing! Note: This is not a paid post, but someone, somewhere at Microsoft PR just got a raise.
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Google Product Search: Give Me Cashback or Give Me Death!
I’ve decided that I really don’t need as many of you coming to Marketing Pilgrim each day. In fact, I’ve decided to start charging for the content that we publish. Oh, but I will still keep the advertisers’ money. They’ll just have to get used to the idea that we don’t have as many eyeballs viewing their ads. And, lastly, I’m kicking out Google. Yeah, I don’t need it bringing any additional readers to the site. They just consume extra bandwidth. Have I gone insane? I haven’t–I’m not really doing any of the above–but media mogul Rupert Murdoch quite possibly has! Speaking in an interview with his own Sky News Australia channel, Murdoch–whom I can never look at without thinking of Spitting Image –bluntly explained how he might ban Google from indexing his newspapers’ content: “I think we will [remove our websites from Google’s search index] but that’s when we start charging,” he said. He added: "The people who simply just pick up everything and run with it – steal our stories, we say they steal our stories – they just take them. That’s Google, that’s Microsoft, that’s Ask.com, a whole lot of people … they shouldn’t have had it free all the time, and I think we’ve been asleep." I’m not going to bore you to death with obvious statements about the death of newspapers and web users expecting free content, so I’ll just let you make up your own mind as to whether Murdoch is a genius or not. For those of you interested, you can watch the entire interview here , or below:
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Rupert Murdoch to Google: “Steal” Someone Else’s Stories!