Consumer confidence and fatter paychecks steamrolled right over stock market woes and a partial government shutdown, with overall peak holiday season sales excluding automobiles increasing 5.1% to $850 billion between Nov. 1 and Dec. 24, according to data from Mastercard SpendingPulse.
Forget Black Friday – Super Saturday is going to leave it in the dust in terms of holiday sales, according to figures from Customer Growth Partners quoted by Bloomberg, projected to reach $26 billion compared to $24 billion for the day after Thanksgiving.
The big three domestic parcel carriers – UPS, FedEx and the U.S. Postal Service – continued to perform admirably in the midst of the torrent of holiday peak season packages, delivering ecommerce orders on time at a rate of 97% or higher, according to data from Shipmatrix.
FedEx is testing the use of autonomous tugs to transport items within its sortation and distribution facilities in an effort to handle the growing volume of bulky ecommerce orders more efficiently. See what other types of automation the carrier is using to optimize the massive flow of packages through its network at peak.
If you haven’t formally evaluated your peak season fulfillment, make this the year you do so. From your analysis of ecommerce operations successes and failures, you can develop a plan to make improvements using a multi-faceted approach. Here are 10 ways to analyze your performance and develop a plan for improvement.
UPS, FedEx and the U.S. Postal Service got virtually all packages delivered on time over Cyber Weekend, according to an annual analysis conducted by Shipmatrix based on its shipper data, achieving the highest overall marks since 2013.
Online sales on Thanksgiving Day were a record $3.7 billion, according to Adobe Analytics, up 28% from 2017, making it the fastest growing retail day in ecommerce history. It was also a very mobile-friendly holiday, with orders from smartphones representing 36.7% of all sales and driving 54.4% of site traffic, Adobe reported.
Even before Thanksgiving, ecommerce sales are already off to the races this holiday season. From Nov. 1 to Nov. 20, U.S. consumers spent $31.9 billion online, according to Adobe Analytics, up 16.7% from 2017. More than $1 billion in sales were generated all of those 20 days, Adobe said, a new record, surpassing $2 billion on Nov. 20.
Retail fraud attempts are projected to increase 14% during Cyber Weekend compared to last year, according to benchmark data from online payment provider ACI Worldwide based on hundreds of millions of merchant transactions. The fraud activity is likely to peak on Thanksgiving Day, according to ACI.
Pouring more water into its moat, Amazon has totally eliminated shipping charges this holiday season, removing the $25 threshold for non-Prime members on items ordered in time for Christmas delivery. Amazon is also hiring and managing thousands of seasonal delivery drivers to handle the holiday crush.