The Vogue Wedding store in the tony Omotesando neighborhood of Tokyo aims to give brides-to-be a one-stop shop for gowns from high-end designers. Read more…
Category: Retail
Zulily is urging consumers in select markets to tweet to its @zulily Twitter account with the hashtag #zulilygiftsweepstakes. Read more…
Adobe Analytics published data about online sales during the Black Friday weekend.
| Day | Sales | Yearly Gain |
| Cyber Monday | $7.9 billion (biggest online shopping day of all time) | 19.7 percent |
| Thanksgiving Day | $3.7 billion | 28 percent |
| Black Friday | $6.2 billion | 23.6 percent |
| Saturday and Sunday | $6.4 billion | 25 percent |
Revenue from smartphone users rose 48.1 percent to $2.1 billion on Cyber Monday.
Mobile devices represented 51.4 percent of site traffic, including 43.6 percent from smartphones and 7.8 percent from tablets.
Mobile devices made up 34 percent of online sales, including 26.3 percent from smartphones and 7.7 percent from tablets.
Top sellers on Cyber Monday included the Nintendo Switch, Little Live Pets, Red Dead Redemption 2, LG TVs, drones (DJI, Air Hogs, Sky Viper), Dell laptops, FurReal Pets and Amazon Echo devices.
Black Friday had the best deals for TVs (prices down 18 percent) and computers (17.8 percent). On the Sunday before Cyber Monday, the best deals were for toys (prices cut 31.6 percent). Adobe forecast the biggest discounts for furniture and bedding (14 percent) to happen on Giving Tuesday.
Denver had the biggest shopping baskets since Thanksgiving with orders averaging $163, followed by $157 in San Francisco, $156 in New York, $156 in Portland and $154 in the Seattle/Tacoma area. The nationwide average rose 6.1 percent from a year earlier to $138, indicating shoppers are more comfortable buying more and bigger ticket items online, Adobe said in a statement.
Large retailers ($1 billion or more in annual e-commerce revenue) saw 6 percent higher conversion rates on smartphones, indicating their investments in improving the mobile shopping experience are paying off.
Social media didn’t help to drive revenue, with a 1.1 percent share of total sales on Cyber Monday, similar to past years. Direct website traffic drove the most revenue with a 25.3 percent share of sales (down 1.2 percent from the prior year), followed by paid search at 25.1 percent (up 7.4 percent), natural search at 18.8 percent (down 2.8 percent) and email at 24.2 percent (up 0.5 percent).
Sales Drivers
| Source | Share | Trend |
| Direct website traffic | 25.3 percent | Down 1.2 percentage points |
| Paid search | 25.1 percent | Up 7.4 percentage points |
| Natural search | 18.8 percent | Down 2.8 percentage points |
| 24.2 percent | Up 0.5 percentage points | |
| Social media | 1.1 percent | Little changed |
Shoe retailer DSW kicked off a mobile web campaign for the holiday shopping rush that’s powered by an interactive augmented reality (AR) “smile meter” for customers to unlock discounts. Read more…
The portion of online shoppers who sign up for retailer loyalty programs has fallen 25 percentage points to 58 percent this year from 83 percent last year, according to a study by researcher CFI Group. About 40 percent of customers who refrain from signing up for loyalty programs said being a member isn’t worth the time, money or effort.
More than half (57%) of consumers plan on shopping on a computer, 42% on a mobile device and 13% through a virtual assistant this holiday season, according to a Citi Retail Services survey. Read more…
Walmart added an augmented reality (AR) feature to its iPhone app that lets shoppers scan price tags with the smartphone’s camera to see on-screen product comparisons, prices and customer ratings, according to a company blog post. Read more…