America’s Online ShoppingFrenzy

Data Reveals Biggest WinnersReport prepared by Joel Zand and Pascal Cohen

2/17

Table of ContentsIntroduction 3

Thanksgiving: It’s Not Just for Turkey Anymore 6

Black Friday: Retailers’ Golden Shopping Day 8

Cyber Monday: The E-Commerce Savings Continue 10

Amazon Prime Day: Jump-Starting E-Commerce in July 13

Mobile Web Traffic 15

Trends for 2015 16

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IntroductionThe Christmas holiday shopping season is here, and with it, a blizzard of online e-commerce activity that U.S. retailers depend upon. Online competition for consumers’ wallets is fierce. Holiday sales are both a challenge and an opportunity for e-commerce stores to capture significant online market share.

In preparation for the 2015 holiday sales season, SimilarWeb analyzed last year’s holiday Web traffic from America’s leading retailers, as well as Amazon Prime Day traffic on July 15, 2015. The data offers key insights into upcoming 2015 online holiday sales, and a deeper understanding for 2016.

SimilarWeb’s data revealed that three days -- Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Thanksgiving -- are the most important for retailers because they were the top three shopping days of the year in terms of volume. Black Friday 2014 delivered nearly 100% more mobile and desktop visits to leading e-tailers than the average day over the last 12 months. Cyber Monday showed an 86% increase in web visits over the average day in the last year.

The lesson for online retailers, therefore, is to focus their marketing efforts on these three specific days over the long Thanksgiving weekend when the volume of shopper visits is at its annual peak.

Thanksgiving is no longer just a family holiday. With our list of leading retailers receiving more than 73% more traffic than the average day this past year, it has become the third most important shopping day of the year, after Black Friday and Cyber Monday. E-tailers not only need to prioritize these three days in their marketing plans; they must also add a new important shopping day to the list.

Significantly, SimilarWeb’s data-driven research found that Prime Day -- a newly introduced online shopping day in the middle of July -- was the fourth busiest shopping day in terms of traffic volume for major online retailers over the last year, with 179 million combined desktop and mobile visits. While Amazon created this special sales day, many other retailers also benefited from it.

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Four big shopping days dominated U.S. Web traffic for American retailers over the last year. These were Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Amazon Prime Day.

Mobile shopping drives big sales and has become critical to e-tailers’ marketing plans. Roughly 54% of U.S. Christmas season traffic came from smartphones and tablets last year. Now more than ever before, consumers gravitate towards mobile convenience, on-the-go efficiency, and quick online price comparisons when they are shopping at brick-and-mortar stores.

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The Christmas holiday shopping season still dominates with online traffic on Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday -- driving nearly a 50% increase over any other day between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and a 85% increase relative to the average day over the last 12 months.

The message to e-tailers is clear: these three super-shopping days are major sales opportunities and can be used as a springboard to capture online market share.

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Thanksgiving: It’s Not Just for Turkey AnymoreThanksgiving has become the third most important online shopping day of the year. For generations, consumers made spending time with family and friends at parades and festive meals a Thanksgiving tradition. Now add to that tradition online shopping and therefore a new action item for e-tailers to take advantage of these opportunities.

SimilarWeb’s research revealed that scores of consumers now spend Thanksgiving online. Consumers spend the holiday previewing Christmas season shopping deals, and getting a head start on buying holiday gifts for others and themselves. As a result, retailers need to put significant resources into ensuring that their marketing strategy includes attracting and selling to consumers on Thanksgiving Day.

The fact that all Gap brands (Gap, Old Navy, Banana Republic, and Athleta) are hosted on a single Gap domain helped make the clothing conglomerate a clear Thanksgiving Day winner last year with a 151% jump in desktop traffic, and 128% increase in mobile visits. Consumer electronics retailer Best Buy boosted its Thanksgiving traffic by 118% on mobile and 100% on desktop. These traffic increases, along with similar surges by Target, J.C. Penney, Macy’s, Walmart, and Kohl’s, show that consumers aren’t waiting to shop on Black Friday or Cyber Monday anymore.

Web retailers need to take advantage of this shift in consumers’ purchasing habits. By promoting online Thanksgiving Day sales early, they can not only start ringing their cash registers earlier, but also increase brand awareness and sales momentum over the entire Thanksgiving weekend.

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Black Friday - Retailers’ Golden Shopping DayWithout a doubt, SimilarWeb’s data analysis reveals that Black Friday has become U.S. retailers’ most important online shopping day of the year. Last year saw nearly 275 million visits to leading U.S. online retailers on the day after Thanksgiving -- more than any other day and close to 100% more visits than the average day over the last 12 months. Roughly, 52% of this Web traffic came from mobile devices.

Retailers that showed the biggest one-day online traffic increases weren’t limited to a particular category. Sporting goods company Nike led Black Friday mobile traffic increases with a 76% jump, shoe e-tailer Zappos at 72%, home decor company Wayfair at 64%, handmade and vintage items site Etsy at 57%, followed by women’s and children’s fashion site Zulily at 53%.

With the exception of Nordstrom replacing Zappos, the Top 5 retailers with the largest one-day increases in Black Friday desktop traffic also ranked the highest for jumps in mobile traffic.

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Cyber Monday - TheE-Commerce Savings ContinuesWinding down the holiday weekend, Cyber Monday saw even greater online activity than Thanksgiving in 2014. It is the second biggest U.S. shopping day in terms of online Web traffic, bested only by Black Friday.

This Web-centric shopping holiday was originally crafted by the U.S. National Retail Federation. The trade group created the day to spur even more online retail activity the first Monday after Thanksgiving weekend. SimilarWeb’s data for last year’s holiday season (below) shows that Mondays generally had higher Web traffic for retailers than most other days of the week

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While data for the last weekend in November saw desktop traffic to online retailers trending downward after Black Friday, Cyber Monday kept consumers’ hunger for more deals alive.

Two online giants dominated Cyber Monday last year for their sheer number of visits by U.S. consumers. Together, Amazon.com and eBay.com received more than 51% of total mobile and desktop traffic that day, receiving nearly 100 million and 35 million visits respectively. The next largest 23 e-tailers received the other 49% of traffic. These online retail giants weren’t asleep at the wheel on Thanksgiving and Black Friday either, but they still managed to keep consumers busy at the end of the long holiday weekend.

Some of the biggest one-day Cyber Monday online traffic surges in 2014 were seen by computer and electronics e-tailers. Newegg had a 103% traffic boost on Cyber Monday, while clothing retailer Gap, department stores Nordstrom and Kohl’s, and Best Buy had one-day traffic increases ranging from 36% - 41%.

Significantly, many of these were traditional brick and mortar retailers that saw busy in-store shopping on Black Friday as well as Saturday and Sunday. The fact that they secured huge surges in Web traffic, even after the weekend shopping frenzy, is a testament to the execution of their online marketing campaigns and strategies.

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Amazon Prime Day: Jump-Starting E-Commerce in July In a new twist, Amazon created an online shopping event on July 15 this year, roughly 4½ months before the start of America’s Thanksgiving weekend shopping extravaganza. The special day of savings was only available to Amazon Prime members who pay a $99 annual membership fee. Everyone with an Amazon Prime Membership receives free Two-Day Shipping on eligible purchases, unlimited Prime Instant Video streaming of movies and TV shows, and the opportunity to borrow many books from the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library.

Amazon’s clever marketing move in July generated the highest number of Prime membership sign-ups in a single day. The company’s strategy prompted Walmart and other American retailers to compete in a summer online savings showdown. It also drew criticism from some customers who claimed that Prime Day was nothing more than a garage sale offering minimal savings on unwanted items.

Amazon, however, was not the only Prime Day winner. Online traffic to Walmart and Macy’s -- who are big Amazon competitors -- was even higher. Walmart, whose trademark is “Everyday Low Prices,” poked fun at Amazon for making customers pay an annual fee to get deals. The Big Box retailer appears to have done quite well on Amazon’s day.

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Mobile Web Traffic

During the 2014 holiday season, Americans used their smartphones and tablets more than half the time to browse the country’s leading retailers’ websites.

Consumers prefer to use their mobile devices to shop during the holiday season. Many shoppers are likely ‘showrooming’ when they visit traditional brick-and-mortar stores, a practice where they browse or try on sought-after goods, but intend to purchase the items for less online.

Retailers can entice shoppers with mobile-focused savings, carefully targeted social media and mobile-friendly ad campaigns to keep their mobile e-commerce machines moving forward.

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Trends for 2015U.S. retailers must plan and develop strategies to acquire their share of Web traffic before the holiday season arrives. It is critical to focus marketing efforts on Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday when shoppers will spend the most time looking for gifts and deals online.

Competition for consumers attention will be at a premium during the two weeks before Thanksgiving. Successful marketing strategies can increase retailers’ traffic share during these crucial shopping days.

SimilarWeb’s Digital Insights Team will continue researching online holiday season e-commerce traffic to U.S. retailers during and after the holiday season. This analysis highlights actionable insights for retailers in advance of consumers’ Christmas shopping and retailers’ online holiday marketing strategies. For more detailed information, contact SimilarWeb’s Digital Insights Team via press@similarweb.com.

The data in this report was compiled from U.S. mobile and desktop Web traffic for Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday in 2014, in addition to Amazon Prime Day in 2015 using SimilarWeb’s proprietary marketing intelligence platform, including market research and analysis.

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