Category: Retail

Instagram-influenced purchases rose 91% in 2018

Rob Williams

Instagram-influenced purchases rose 91% in 2018 from a year earlier, but Facebook is the market leader, influencing 6x more purchases in 2018, according to adtech firm StitcherAds.

  • Retailers spent 47% more on Facebook & Instagram holiday campaigns in 2018 from the prior year.
  • Retailers saw a 14% increase in Facebook-attributed in-store sales from a year earlier.
  • Over the holiday season, 2.7x more purchases occurred on mobile devices vs. desktop.
  • Cost per click declined about 10% from a year earlier.
  • CPM fell 17% from a year earlier.

Cyber Monday sales data from Adobe Analytics

Rob Williams

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
Email 24.2 percent Up 0.5 percentage points
Social media 1.1 percent Little changed

Source: Adobe Analytics

Study: Loyalty programs lose appeal for online shoppers

Rob Williams
Photo by mentatdgt from Pexels.

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.