Before eCommerce executives bid adieu to what was a very hectic pre-Christmas rush and shift focus to 2018, they’ll be analyzing KPIs over the holiday shopping period looking to confirm that their various campaigns and investments paid off.
Having previously shared our data insights on how holiday shoppers took to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the Namogoo data team honed in on the critical, month-long shopping period from November 23 to December 23, analyzing close to billions of consumer web sessions across all top retail sites.
At a high level, eCommerce businesses enjoyed a significant rise in conversions, 34 percent higher than the previous 30 days.
Digging deeper into the data, here are some of the main findings that were uncovered.
The ‘Holiday Shopping Fab Five’
Unsurprisingly, Black Friday kick-started an especially busy traffic period for online retailers, which, this year, extended to the day after Cyber Monday. This five-day period saw daily visitor rates spike 60 percent higher than the average between November 23rd and Christmas. High traffic volumes continued for up until December 19, where visits and orders began to slow down.
And still: Cyber Monday remains the undisputed champion for online traffic and revenue…
As expected, Cyber Monday remains head and shoulders above all other days when it comes to traffic and sales over the holiday season. This day attracted almost double the number of visitors than the average over the analyzed period. By and large, online retailers capitalized on this traffic and reeled in the highest number of orders.
But we have a new conversion king: Say hello to Cyber Tuesday.
While Cyber Tuesday purchases trailed Cyber Monday by 17 percent, they were still 60 percent higher than the average daily order rates for the period between Black Friday and Christmas.
Interestingly, Cyber Tuesday was when eCommerce businesses enjoyed their highest conversion rate — on both desktop and mobile — during the holiday season. That day clocked in the highest average conversion rate throughout the holiday season, topping Cyber Monday by 13 percent.
Could this data be reflecting a change in consumer behavior? Are more online shoppers consciously electing to hold off on completing their wish lists until after Black Friday and Cyber Monday hype? Cyber Tuesday clearly presents an additional opportunity for online retailers to capitalize on holiday shopping.
Desktop versus Mobile: The Tale of the tape
Mobile traffic continues to rise, with 52% of website visits coming from mobile devices during this holiday period. However, only 35 percent of total orders were placed using a mobile device, indicating that consumers prefer to complete the checkout process on their desktops..
Online retailers will clearly be focusing on optimizing the mobile customer journey to improve the shopping experience and further maximize conversions in 2018.
Customer Journey Hijacking Infection Peaks on Cyber Monday
Normally affecting between 15 to 25 percent of all web traffic, the growing problem of Customer Journey Hijacking also rose markedly during this timeframe. For many eCommerce executive this came as no surprise. A recent study surveying over 1,300 online consumers found that about 55% were likely to click on ads injected into visitor sessions by competitors.
Visitor sessions infected with this problem peaked on Cyber Monday at 31.2 percent. The average infection rate over the entire holiday season was also higher than normal, averaging out at 26 percent.
This growing issue disrupts the intended online customer experience via unauthorized ads injected into consumer browsers, most of which divert them directly to competitor sites.
