On Friday 25th November 2016, also known as Black Friday saw a 6.7% growth in online sales compared to last year and saw an unexpected rise in high street shopping visits! The online sales growth figure fell short of the predicted double-digit surge but we think a near 7% growth is great!
Footfall was expected to decline by 5% and surprisingly the results showed a 2% increase, with high street growth at 2.8% outshining retail park and shopping centre growth. From data collected by the BBC News, the predicted spend for Black Friday 2016 was £1.96 billion with 37% of sales expected to be made online.
Research conducted by Retail Week suggests that the hype of Black Friday could be wearing off with just 21% of consumers who said they were looking to take advantage of Black Friday promotions this year back in October 2016, a decrease compared to last year’s 25%.
The results from the survey also highlighted that 47% of 18-24 year olds intended to spend their money on electrical products followed by clothing and footwear items. Using John Lewis as an example who achieved sales of £199.8m in the week to last Friday, up 6.5% on the same week last year found electrical items were luring in the shoppers.
Some data produced by PCA Predict illustrates Black Friday’s growth year on year since 2013. The peak time when the most transactions were made on Friday 25th November 2016 was from 1pm to 2pm. In relation to devices used for transactions made on Black Friday, desktop was the most popular with 205,810 transactions made between 1pm and 2pm, followed by mobile which saw 137,770 transactions made between 9am and 10am and tablet as the least used with a peak number of 49,800 transactions made between 9pm and 10pm which is down from the previous two years.
John Lewis found that mobile was the main device being used by customers to make online purchases between midnight and 9am on Black Friday. Is your Ecommerce website mobile-friendly? A staggering amount of purchases were made online due to many choosing to shop online in the comfort of their own homes rather than in-stores.
How were your sales this Black Friday? If you sell online but didn’t get the hive of activity that other retailers did then you need our help, contact our sales team to discuss how we can help you grow your ecommerce revenues!