Mobile Magic: LYONSCG Cyber Weekend Client Performance
The holiday shopping season is absolutely roaring. Consumer confidence is at its highest level in 18 years. US eCommerce sales grew 15.5%, which is faster than the prior three years. Furthermore, more than 60% of consumers plan on completing more than half of their holiday shopping online this winter.
All this came together across Cyber Weekend – the 5 days spanning Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday – driving more than $22B in sales and 19% growth over 2017. A lot of this came on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, two days not usually known for robust digital sales.
Most interesting, though, is the proliferation of mobile shopping. On Black Friday, 33% of online sales came from smartphones: a big jump from 2017’s 29.1%.
Insights From Our Clients
These broad digital trends were amplified when it came to the impressive Cyber Weekend results of our clients, and none more so than the rapid migration to mobile.
Across 7 distinct industries, mobile traffic rose by 42% on average compared to 2017. Our Health and Beauty clients led the way with a 52% uptick. This traffic, combined with our Digital Marketing team’s conversion optimization efforts, drove a whopping 42.9% increase in mobile revenue year-over-year.
While more and more people continue to shop online, this mobile traffic spike had to come from somewhere. The phenomenal mobile growth correlated directly to a slight decline in desktop traffic, with rates varying from -15% to +11%. Desktop revenue grew by a modest 16.8% to further confirm the trend.
Tablets – Desktop Experiences with Mobile Qualities
Tablets have always been a curious creature when it comes to mobile commerce. Are they mobile devices? Or do the larger formats align better to a desktop experience? This holiday season went a long ways towards answering that question.
From a metric standpoint, tablet-based shopping closely mirrored that of the desktop computer. Traffic and order volumes were relatively muted, as shoppers preferred their mobile phones. Also, desktop’s eCommerce calling card – large purchases and a higher average order value (AOV) – points directly at tablets more closely emulating a desktop experience.
What We Learned
Cyber Weekend is always an exciting time for us here at LYONSCG. The five days are some of our busiest, and they act as a proving ground for the strategies, optimizations, and tactics we work with our clients to develop throughout the year.
We’ve focused substantial efforts on driving mobile-first designs and strategies, and it brings us great joy to see our clients converting broad mobile trends into profit during their most critical season.
