Online Black Friday conversion rates for large store-based retailers beat their Cyber Monday conversion.

Conversion rates on many large online retailers’ websites were higher on Black Friday than they were on Cyber Monday, according to exclusive data from marketing analytics firm Jumpshot.

Jumpshot’s analysis is based on its review of more than 160 billion monthly clicks made by 100 million consumers globally. Jumpshot says U.S. consumers comprise a significant portion of its panel. Jumpshot tracks the clickstream of consumers to track on-site searches, product pages views and online conversion points. Mobile data does not include app data.

Nordstrom.com, for example, had an 8.4% desktop conversion rate on Black Friday, compared with 6.9% desktop conversion rate on Cyber Monday. Similarly, the department store retailer’s mobile conversion rate on Black Friday reached 2.1%, slightly above 1.9% on mobile for Cyber Monday, according to Jumpshot. Nordstrom is No. 17 in the Internet Retailer 2017 Top 500.

Regardless of which holiday day “won” the conversion rate battle, both rates are higher than Nordstrom.com’s average conversion rate between Sept. 1 and Thanksgiving (Nov. 23), which was 4.8% on desktop and 1.0% on mobile, according to Jumpshot.

On Black Friday, Amazon.com (No. 1 in the Top 500), Kohls.com (No. 18), Macys.com (No. 6) and ToysRUs.com (No. 38) had desktop conversion rates above 10%. On Cyber Monday, only Amazon.com and Kohls.com had a desktop conversion rate over 10%.

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Shaun Rivera, senior analyst at Jumpshot, notes that broadly within this group of retailers, web-only merchants had higher conversion rates on Cyber Monday while store-based retailers had higher web conversion on Black Friday.

Here is a look at how the big e-commerce players fared over the Thanksgiving weekend:

 

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For mobile, Amazon.com had the highest mobile web conversion rate on Black Friday at 5.6%, followed by ToysRUs.com at 3.4%, eBay.com at 2.7% and Walmart.com (No. 3) at 2.7%.

 

Many retailers continued to have higher-than-average conversion rates on the Saturday and Sunday following Thanksgiving, compared with their average conversion rates prior to Black Friday. In fact several retailers had their holiday weekend-high desktop conversion rate on Saturday, including Amazon.com (18.9%), eBay.com (9.9%), Etsy.com (7.8%), Macys.com (13.0%) and Nordstrom.com (10.0%).

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However, even though retailers’ conversion rates may have been high or higher on Saturday and Sunday, their overall traffic and purchase values were less than Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

“As more shoppers shift to online shopping, this might just be an effect of the Black Friday to Cyber Monday shopping, such as those willing to go online on Saturday with intent to buy,” Rivera says. “Retailers are adjusting accordingly, as some like Macy’s and  J.C. Penney have deals and promotions that extend into the following Wednesday.”

In terms of year-over-year conversion growth, Macys.com had the highest year-over-year desktop conversion increase. The retailer’s conversion rate increased to 11.3% on Black Friday from 1.4% on Black Friday 2016 and to 8.2% on Cyber Monday from 1.2% on the same day a year ago.

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Although Target.com (No. 20) had strong desktop holiday conversion rate increases, its mobile conversion rate decreased year over year on both Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Target and Best Buy declined to comment on these numbers and several other retailers did not respond to a request for comment.

It’s also worth noting that conversion rate is only one way to measure growth, as many online retailers did see increases in sales and number of

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transactions over the Cyber Five weekend.  In fact, according to e-commerce analytics firm Slice Intelligence, Best Buy, Amazon, Apple and Walmart grew online sales between 19% and 25% during the Cyber week, and Target grew 44% over Cyber Week 2016.


In an ongoing effort to understand the most vital business strategies of merchants that sell online, Internet Retailer is taking a deep dive on conversion rate. Help us improve our estimates and category benchmarks by answering the two questions below. 



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