Consumer analytics firm Custora just released a report on this year’s Cyber Monday activity, which revealed it to be the largest single day of online spending in history. The report is based on Custora’s analysis of over 70 million online shoppers and over $10 billion in e-commerce revenue across over 100 US-based online retailers.
Here are the highlights:
Black Friday is big, but Cyber Monday is bigger:
This year’s holiday e-commerce season (starting November 1st) had 20% more sales over last year’s. Sales on Black Friday were up by 16.2%, but Cyber Monday sales increased by 18.2% over last year.
Cyber Monday is Mobile Monday:
Not only did online shopping increase, there was, not surprisingly, an increase in shopping through mobile. Nearly a third of all online purchases on Cyber Monday were made through a mobile or tablet, up from 20% of all purchases last year. iPhones and iPads were still dominant when it came to online shopping during the holidays, with 83% of mobile sales coming from the iOS operating system, and only 16% coming from Android devices.
Social media barely drove any sales:
Echoing IBM’s sentiments, Custora reported that social media drove less than 1% of online sales. Instead, it was still the old workhorses of organic search (24%) and email (18%) that drove most of the sales, which shows just how effective those two digital marketing channels still are. While social media might be great at managing brand reputation, customer service or even brand advocacy, it’s still got a long way to go before it starts directly driving online sales.
