The Rise of Sofa Sunday and Mobile Friday BrightEdge Research Uncovers the New Holiday Shopping Journey with Sofa Sunday and Mobile (Black) Friday Overshadowing Cyber Monday
The Christmas and holiday shopping season from November through December is a critical time to observe shoppers’ online behavior. With several holidays and the most important shopping days of the year, this eight-week period in the United States is filled with ubiquitous marketing messaging, massive discounting, and general shopping euphoria. For retailers, it is a make or break time of the year.
Following on from BrightEdge’s Holiday Shopping Report based on 2016 data, fresh new research notes changing trends of 2016 and 2017 audience digital traffic in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving weekend, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday. This new research provides clues for marketers on how to prepare for the holiday shopping season. The report confirms holiday shopping is happening sooner and consumers are more and more comfortable making purchases on their mobile phone or tablet. Additionally, data findings point to Black Friday surpassing Cyber Monday in digital importance.
The holidays provide plenty of opportunities to create more personalized content and provide intelligent experiences both at the store and online. As online retail spending increases over the holiday season, marketers need to focus on creating smart content and shopping experiences to attract, engage, and convert customers at the right time.
Sofa Sunday - the Sunday before Black Friday, is THE major online research day The Sunday before Thanksgiving and Black Friday was a day of high traffic, especially mobile traffic. BrightEdge dubs this Sofa Sunday because it was the highest mobile traffic day until that point, but it shows relatively modest transaction volume. This suggests that consumers use Sofa Sunday to research and prepare their holiday shopping lists ahead of Black Friday. Mobile traffic on Sofa Sunday is 21% higher than a typical Sunday in the holiday season.
Black Friday mobile traffic outperformed Desktop by 75% Brands are aware that Mobile traffic exceeds Desktop traffic by 10% to 40% most days, but may be surprised to find Mobile exceeds Desktop by 75% on Mobile Black Friday but only 5% on Cyber Monday. Mobile is dominant and simply a way of life for consumers.
Mobile Black Friday sales exceeded Mobile Cyber Monday sales by 9% Black Friday mobile purchase activity was so strong that BrightEdge has dubbed it Mobile Black Friday. Mobile purchase revenue on Black Friday exceeded mobile purchase revenue on Cyber Monday by 9%. Deals that were previously available only in stores are now available anywhere and on any device. BrightEdge research suggests that Mobile Black Friday will continue to gain momentum as shoppers replace store visits with mobile visits and purchases.
Download the full report for all of 2017’s holiday shopping trends.