Online retailers can finally breathe a sigh of relief. After months of doom and gloom, Cyber Monday (Nov. 30) brought with it a glimmer of sunshine as consumers shopped online in record numbers.
As an editor, tons of statistics, figures and surveys — Cyber Monday, Black Friday, etc. — come to my desk. So I thought I’d give you a quick roundup of some of my favorite Cyber Monday stats:
∗ $887 million was spent online, up 5 percent versus a year ago, matching the biggest online spending day on record, Dec. 9, 2008, according to a comScore press release.
∗ MarketLive’s retailers had a 19 percent year-over-year increase in revenue and a 43.6 percent increase in traffic on Cyber Monday, according to a company press release.
∗ On Cyber Monday, 71 percent of the major online retailers tracked by the Retail Email Blog sent at least one promotional email, up from 70 percent on Cyber Monday 2008, according to a report by Chad White, the research director at Smith-Harmon, a Responsys company. In fact, White said that Cyber Monday was both the most popular retail email day of this year and also the most popular of all time. What’s more, on Cyber Sunday, 45 percent of retailers sent at least one promotional email, up from 36 percent last year. That made Nov. 29 the biggest Sunday ever for retail email marketing.
∗ One in four email marketing messages wasn’t delivered to recipients’ inboxes on Cyber Monday, according to a press release that contained deliverability data from Pivotal Veracity.
∗ Cyber Monday sales were up 13.7 percent versus Cyber Monday 2008, according to the Coremtrics Benchmark Cyber Monday Report. In addition, the average dollar amount consumers spent per online order rose 38.2 percent from Cyber Monday last year ($180.03 versus $130.24), with much of the growth coming from the apparel category. Finally, consumers bought 30 percent more items per order on Cyber Monday 2009 compared to Cyber Monday 2008.
∗ As of 4 p.m. EST on Cyber Monday, eBags.com’s sales were up 50.1 percent versus last year’s Cyber Monday, according to Peter Cobb, eBag’s co-founder and senior vice president of marketing.
∗ “Cyber monday online deals,” “cyber monday discounts” and “cyber monday bargains” topped the list of Cyber Monday Google Hot Trends, according to a Dec. 1 blog post on the Google Retail Advertising Blog called “Cyber Monday’s Hot Search Trends.”
∗ Amazon was the top visited retail website on Cyber Monday, seeing a 44 percent increase in visits compared to 2008, according to a report from Experian Hitwise.
∗ For the third consecutive year, PayPal saw double-digit growth in online sales — i.e., total payment volume — on Cyber Monday, according to a company press release.
All pretty impressive, no? Despite the economy, online retailers seem to be meeting consumers’ holiday shopping needs this year — whether it’s due to fantastic online sales, easy-to-navigate websites, the convenience of shopping online or great customer service. Whatever the reason, let’s hope this good momentum continues.
Happy selling!