With the hype surrounding both Black Friday and Cyber Monday at unprecedented levels in the UK this year, it was almost impossible to avoid the various promotions and news articles documenting the chaos and frenzy that was created amongst shoppers. However, away from the badly behaved shoppers fighting over cut price televisions, these two crucial shopping days provided us with a number of useful stats on how the online retail world is evolving.

With online traffic on Black Friday up 60% year on year according to data from Experian and IMRG and 180 million UK retail site visitors spending an estimated £810 million, 2014 saw the explosion of the predominantly American event for UK retailers. Many consumers opted to tackle their Christmas shopping on Black Friday rather than Cyber Monday due to the perceived larger discounts on offer, leading to 405,000 people purchasing on Black Friday compare to 268,000 on Cyber Monday. This switch was mainly caused by the ferocious promotion behind Black Friday creating a great deal of hype behind the American imported shopping event.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday also provided some very useful statistics on the way that consumers are now shopping online, with mobile emerging as one of the most used platforms. Traffic from smartphones rose 57% compared to 2013 with mobile accounting for 60% of traffic on Black Friday and 35% of traffic on Cyber Monday in the UK. These stats proving data to support modern consumer’s tendency to shop on the move and find the latest deals wherever they are. However, despite this serge in mobile consumers, many companies are not providing the mobile experience that their customers demand. Mobile conversion rates actually fell by 6.1% compared to 2013, illustrating the fact that a number of site’s mobile versions were not performing in terms of encouraging users towards a purchase. The number of consumers that use their smartphones for online shopping is rising year on year and providing a huge potential customer base for online retailers. Through the inclusion of strong responsive design on your site, you can provide consumers with the mobile experience that they desire.

Both Black Friday and Cyber Monday provided huge opportunity for online retailers to boost their sales in the run up to Christmas. However, it also highlighted a change to a more mobile consumer and the fact that a number of these consumers are not experiencing the mobile shopping experience they demand. Contact Ascensor today to discover how we can add responsive design to your site to ensure it meets your user’s mobile needs.


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