Black Friday Holiday Sales 2015 - Online Sales Report and Trend

Holiday Season Sales is over! Who Won the Battle This Time?

This Holiday Season observed the change in shoppers behavior of turning to online stores and saying ‘No, Thanks’ to brick and mortar stores. This shifting of buying habit has lead to a change in the old tradition of shopping during holidays. Crowds that once stands in the queue and created record breaking sales now used their gadgets for shopping.

This year, both Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday saw a fall in brick and mortar store sales where Thanksgiving Day sales dropped from $2 billion in 2014 to $1.8 billion this year and Black Friday Day experienced a slight sales drop from $11.6 billion in 2014 to $10.4 billion in 2015. Research from ShoppersTrak shows physical stores has 10% sales drop on both Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday compared to last year.

Contrary, shoppers were more diverted to online sales resulting in doubling the sales on both Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday. All those physical stores that were closed during these two days, including few names like GameStop, REI, Nordstrom and Staples experienced an increase in both sales and traffic record from last year.

According to Adobe Data, Cyber Monday hits its history with a new record of $3 Billion sales.

Thanksgiving Day

Sales Data from Adobe Digital Index shows retailers got an excited feedback from shoppers. This year, shoppers spent $1.73 billion, a hike of 25% than last year. An average order value experienced was $162, the increase of 9% than last year and discount of an average of 26%.

This time, online spending reached new heights achieving 57% sales, contributing most by smartphones around 43% and tablets around 14%. Mobile traffic accounts record-breaking $639 million sales of 37%, observing 22% sales from mobiles and 15% from tablets.

Black Friday

This season, traditional Black Friday has gone meaningless where shoppers visit these brick and mortar store after Thanksgiving Day. This time buyer goes online where the Black Friday experience drop of $1 billion this year. However, with changed shopping behavior of buyers that have experienced this year, a very different type of shopping item bought by ten of thousands of American shoppers experienced was Guns.

FBI spokesperson confirmed record-breaking background checks performed this year; 185,353 on 2015 breaking record of 177,170 of 2014.

Adobe Digital Index data shows, $2.74 billion is spent by shoppers resulting in the increase of 14.3 % than last year. Mobile sales were $905 million resulting in 33.2% than last year data 27%.

Cyber Monday

Cyber Monday gained top sales this year; breaking all of its record.

Sales data recorded on Cyber Monday saw an increase of 16% and collected whopping $3.17 billion accompanied by 26%sales via. Mobile; $799 million. An average of 14 out of 100 products came to be out of stock.

Custora data recorded 16.2% hike than 2014 and 14.7% hike in orders. Mobile phones have 27% of online sales, increased by 23% than last year. Social media caters 1.5% of orders and email advertising has 22% of orders.

Trends Observed On This Holiday Season

• Online Shopping: This year, online shopping goes on in the trend where brick and mortar store has low visibility than last year. Total online sales experienced on Cyber Monday 2015 are expected to be $3 billion much more than last year of 18%. Whereas, broadband has got high online traffic of 18% on Saturday and 21% on Sunday as expected by Verizon Retail Index.
• Mobile Shopping: Shoppers buying from their smartphones and tablets seeks a tremendous hike than last year. This online usage is much more strong than desktop. Data from Custora reported, shoppers placed ordered using their smartphone and tablet resulted in 36.1% sales recorded on Black Friday 2015 then 30.3% recorded last year.
• Free Shipping: Many retailers have offered free shipping on minimum order value which was also a major source of attraction for shoppers during the holiday season.
• Early Discounts: This year, the three busy holiday days have expected a declined customer interests as the retailers have already started their offers earlier and extended by end of December.

Key Aspects to Consider

• Online shopping has declined the tradition brick and mortar stores shopping trend.
• Smartphones are clear winners this holiday season, therefore merchants have to start building a responsive website to be displayed better across all platforms. iPhone is the most preferred device for shopping.
• According to sales data report of Adobe Digital Index, Cyber Monday seeks an average of 13 out of 100 products to be out of stock.

Major Key Findings

The top 5 retailers rise well on Black Friday are:

• Best Buy (4.2X)
• JC Penney (4.1X)
• Macy’s (3.8X)
• Dick’s Sporting Goods (3.6X)
• Sports Authority (3.5X)

(Data compared between indexed traffic and non-holiday Friday 2015)

Top 5 Cities Experienced Maximum Shopping on Black Friday

• Panama City, FL
• Sioux Falls, SD
• Salisbury, MD
• Youngstown, OH
• Portland-Auburn, ME

Buyers Shopping Statistics

Each shoppers has visited an average of 2.8 stores and spent an average of 4.9 hours on doing shopping.

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