Black Friday and mobile shopping were the big winners during the crucial five-day holiday shopping period of Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday in the U.S.
Mobile web accounted for 66% of all digital traffic to retail websites and 49% of all orders placed, e-commerce platform provider and marketing vendor Salesforce reports. Salesforce’s data includes mobile site data only and does not include tablets or mobile apps.
Salesforce.com says 54% of all digital orders on Thanksgiving were made from a mobile device, up from 47% a year ago. Mobile devices accounted for 49% of orders on Black Friday and 45% of digital orders on Cyber Monday. Additionally, two sites—Facebook and Instagram—accounted for 94% of social traffic from both mobile and desktop to retail websites, up from 92% in 2017.
Overall, Thanksgiving Day e-commerce revenue increased 18%, Black Friday was up 13% and Cyber Monday e-commerce revenue up 16% compared with the previous year’s equivalent days, Salesforce says.
Salesforce’s results are based on the activities of hundreds of millions of global shoppers across more than 30 countries on its Commerce Cloud; billions of consumer engagements on social media on its Marketing Cloud; 200 million customer service cases viewed in Service Cloud; and data from 6,000 consumers across six countries it accumulated for its “Shopper-First Retailing” report.
“Consumers went online early, went mobile and went social this Cyber Week, driving healthy digital growth for retailers,” says Rob Garf, vice president of industry strategy for retail at Salesforce. “This holiday season, shoppers responded to retailer innovation in mobile, payments and social that are enabling seamless and personalized consumer experiences—from product discovery to purchase.”
Meanwhile, mobile app visits increased 21% year over year on Cyber Monday, as the shopping day hit $6 billion in total digital spending, according to research firm comScore Inc. Results from comScore are based on behavioral data collected from the comScore panel, which are combined with customer survey results and data from syndicated sources.
The biggest increase for traffic across both mobile web and desktop occurred on Sat., Nov. 24, when traffic grew 16% year year over. ComScore also found that total digital commerce, which includes both desktop and mobile spending on e-commerce websites, grew 38% on Thanksgiving, 36% on Black Friday and 27% on Cyber Monday compared with the previous year’s equivalent shopping days.
Free shipping was a major driver for sales as well. 81% of orders on Thanksgiving had free shipping associated with them, both comScore and Salesforce report. With Amazon setting a high bar with free two-day shipping, it’s in retailers’ best interests to offer similar benefits. Target is offering two-day free shipping from Nov. 1 through Dec. 22 on hundreds of thousands of items with no minimum purchase, while Amazon is allowing shoppers without a Prime membership to get free shipping, even without reaching the $25 minimum purchase threshold on all orders that will arrive by Dec. 25.