Consumers kept shopping online on Christmas Day, increasing U.S. e-retail sales by 8.3% over Dec. 25 last year, IBM Corp. reports today via its IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark, which tracks data from 8,000 retail clients. The IBM report does not estimate sales in dollars.
Amazon.com Inc., No. 1 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, also announced today that over the holiday period it had attracted an additional 10 million members to its Amazon Prime service that offers free two-day shipping and other perks. Amazon did not say how many of those were free trial memberships.
While e-retail sales in the U.S. were up 15.0% from Nov. 1 through Dec. 21, according to comScore Inc., consumers will be sending back many of those purchases to web retailers. UPS Inc. said today it expects to handle 4 million parcels from shoppers returning holiday purchases in the first week of January, including 800,000 on the peak day, Jan. 6. A UPS survey early in the shopping season found that 62% of online shoppers said they had returned an online purchase in 2014, up from 51% in 2012.
Colin Sebastian, an analyst at investment firm Robert W. Baird & Co. issued a note today saying that online holiday sales appear to be tracking at around his earlier estimate of 13-14% year-over-year growth, although he noted some signs of softness for retailer sales through such major shopping portals as Amazon, eBay and Google. ChannelAdvisor Corp., which helps merchants sell through such online portals, reported earlier this week that sales for its merchant clients are up 19.7% for the holiday season on Amazon, 10.1% on eBay and 11.0% on Google Shopping.
While noting that the 10 million new members likely include consumers signing up for free trial memberships in Amazon Prime, Sebastian says, “We believe Prime continues to be a key driver of growth for Amazon, and we now estimate more than 30 million paid members worldwide.” Another Wall Street analyst who follows e-commerce, Mark Mahaney of RBC Capital Markets, had estimated earlier in the fall 30-40 million Prime members in the U.S. and 40-50 million worldwide.
Sebastian also took note of Amazon’s report that nearly 60% of its customers used a smartphone to shop and that sales from its smartphone app doubled this holiday season. “Mobile continues to accelerate the secular shift from offline to online purchases, in our view, as consumer use-cases for last minute shopping, in-store purchases, and price comparison continue to expand,” Sebastian said.
Sebastian did expression some concern that Amazon did not report peak-day sales for the holidays, as it had in prior-year releases. He noted Amazon released some more data about Europe, including record shipments through its distribution network in France.
Amazon also announced this week the launch of its Boxing Day sales in Canada Amazon announces Boxing Day sales, where the day after Christmas is a major holiday. Those sales run from Dec. 23-29. Amazon said 2014 was the busiest holiday season ever for Amazon.ca, though the e-retailer did not provide details, other than to say that if every item ordered “were packaged up in an Amazon.ca box and laid side by side, it would stretch from Toronto to Saskatoon,” a distance of 1,832 miles.
IBM also documented that more consumers are shopping online via smartphones and tablets. Mobile devices accounted for 57.1% of online traffic to retail sites on Christmas Day, an increase of 18.6 percentage points from a year earlier, and 34.8% of sales, up 20.4 percentage points.
IBM also reported the following statistics about online shopping on Christmas Day:
- Average order value was $100.33, up 6.2% from a year earlier.
- Shoppers purchased an average of 3.5 items per order, down 1.4%.
- Smartphones accounted for 40.6% of online traffic and tablets 15.9%. But tablets accounted for 18.4% of online sales and smartphones 16.3%.
- Computers accounted for 42.6% of online traffic, and 65.2% of online sales. Consumers spent 21.4% more on average when shopping on their desktops, with an average order value of $107.72 compared to $88.70 on mobile devices.
- Consumers using Apple iOS devices, iPhones and iPads, outpaced those using Android devices on three key metrics. Apple users averaged $97.28 per order compared to $67.40 for Android users, accounted for 39.1% of online traffic versus 17.7% for Android users, and accounted for 27% of online sales versus 7.6% for shoppers on Android phones and tablets.
With some consumers back at work today, computers were accounting for just about half of traffic to online retail sites as of 10 a.m. Pacific time today, and mobile devices the rest, according to the IBM online dashboard, which IBM continually updates. The conversion rate today was 4.56% on computers and 2.15% on mobile devices.