So how did over 230 of the leading merchants fare during the 2013 Cyber Monday? This report analyzed retailers response to shipping and delivery timing, free shipping, promotions, returns and customer service.
If Holiday 2013 demonstrated anything to ecommerce merchants, it was that we need better ways to meet customer expectations and deliver products. So what did we as an industry learn during this challenging holiday season? Here are key observations by ecommerce and catalog operations experts.
A new study by Innotrac has found that the most popular types of promotions offered by merchants over the 2013 holiday season were shipping offers. In fact, 34% of all promotions offered in holiday 2013 were shipping related and the single most offered promotion during the holidays was free shipping.
The competition in price played a major role in the declining 2013 holiday sales results at Best Buy, according to a statement released by the electronics retailer. In the nine week holiday period that ended on Jan. 4, Best Buy reported $11.45 million in revenue, down slightly from the 2012 holiday season of $11.75 million.
Online retailers have a reason to celebrate this holiday season. This was a record-breaking season for many, according to this infographic from Monetate. Between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday, ecommerce sales were $5.2 billion, an increase of 16.5% over 2012. Black Friday saw $1.5 billion in online sales, while Cyber Monday saw $2 billion in online sales.
Facebook ad performance spiked for retailers. Nearly 1/3 of revenue and conversions from Nov. 1 through Dec. 2 occurred between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday, according to this infographic by Kenshoo.
Ecommerce sales grew considerably over the Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday weekend, and the channel itself took a bigger slice of the pie when compared to in-store revenues. In this video, Adobe Digital Index principal analyst Tamara Gaffney talks about some of the holiday sales trends to date.
In this video interview, MarketLive chairman and founder Ken Burke talks about some of the reasons the ecommerce channel is seeing such tremendous growth.
Customer satisfaction is a huge issue for online retailers, especially during the holiday season. In this video interview, StellaService CEO Jordy Leiser talks about his company’s Thanksgiving Weekend findings.
In this video interview, Panopta CEO Jason Abate discusses the outages that plagued Cabelas.com over Cyber Weekend 2013, and what merchants need to do to keep their sites up and running throughout the peak season.