Online prices fell 2.6% in June compared to a year ago, the largest drop since May 2020 and slightly more than in May, according to the latest Adobe Digital Price Index, as overall inflation has moderated but the cost of consumer goods is still far above pre-pandemic levels. The largest year-over-year price drops were in consumer electronics (-12.9%), computers, (-16.9%) and appliances (-8.3%).
Online prices continue to fall as inflationary pressure has eased and retailers discount to clear out stocks ahead of Q4 ordering. Prices were down 2.3% year-over-year in May, the largest drop since the onset of the pandemic, and down 1.2% from April 2023, according to Adobe Analytics. It was good news for consumers but bad news for retail ledgers. Big-ticket categories remain challenged.
With more legacy software giants embracing cloud-based, composable commerce offerings, such as recent moves by SAP and Adobe, members of the MACH Alliance (microservices-based, API, cloud, headless) are seeking to differentiate themselves while also seeing it as validation of their model. The group says usage is growing faster in the U.S. than Europe, home to many early adopters.
Buy now pay later (BNPL) usage continues to grow, as cash- and credit-strapped consumers dinged by inflation use it for a wider variety of purchases. The share of online purchases using BNPL increased by 14% and revenue grew by 27% in 2022, according to new data from Adobe Digital Insights.
The recent Cyber Weekend was a boon for online mining of consumer data, with major social media players using cookies to track users’ activity across the internet, including of course ecommerce websites, often without permission, then sell the data to advertisers.
Amazon is raising the fees it charges sellers for its Multichannel Fulfillment (MCF) program, saying the hike comes with enhancements like app integrations with BigCommerce, Adobe/Magento and Wix — not Shopify — but sellers are complaining, saying they’ll be priced out of the offering.
As did Black Friday, Cyber Monday set a record of $11.3 billion in online spending, per Adobe Analytics, up 5.8% from the first-ever down year of 2021, once again driven by heavy discounting to spur demand in an inflationary period. At the peak of 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. PST, consumers were spending at a clip of $12.8 million every minute, Adobe reported.
Despite inflation fears, retailers are likely to see an increase in consumer spending this summer, with 61% planning to shop “holidays” like Prime Day, and 76% of them saying they’ll spend the same or more on the extravaganza as last year, according to data from Adobe Commerce.
Given that one extra second of load time may reduce conversions by more than 4%, such problems can be critical to your success. Therefore, if you’re running a Magento store, make sure you’re able to withstand the load and deliver a quality customer experience even when traffic spikes occur.
More than 350 ecommerce sites running Magento 1 were hit with the same strain of MageCart malware the week of Jan. 31, a card skimming attack that exploited a known leak in the Quickview plugin, according to a report from security provider Sansec.