6 Big Cyber Monday Stats and Insights for UK e-Commerce Managers

Are you all geared up for today’s sales? Here are six interesting stats and insights that show the full impact of Cyber Monday on UK shores.

As any e-Commerce manager will know, today is Cyber Monday – the United States’ biggest online retail day measured by transactions.

This American export is making a big impression here in the UK too. Starting from last year, there has been a huge spike in search interest as UK marketers and consumers cotton on to the potential of this very modern sales day.

Source: Google Trends.

Here are six insights to help you make sense of today’s sales spikes…

1. Cyber Monday Visits in the UK Were Up 9% Last Year...

Last year, 115 million Internet users visited online retail sites on Cyber Monday – a nine per cent rise on 2012.

[Source: Experian]

2. ...But Today is Set to Smash All Records

This year looks to be the year that Cyber Monday really makes it big on this shores. Today, 145 million UK Internet shoppers are expected to visit online retail sites in pursuit of festive bargains – a massive 26% rise on 2013.

It's predicted this sales rush will result in £649.6 million in online sales, the equivalent of £451,000 every minute.

[Source: Experian, via Econsultancy]

3. Cyber Monday has a bigger, busier cousin

In 2013, there were more visits to UK online retailers on the second Monday of December. On this date, British Internet users made 120 million visits to online retail sites, compared to Cyber Monday's paltry 115 million.

Experian calls this neglected cousin of Cyber Monday 'Manic Monday'. We wonder whether this year will be just another Manic Monday, or something truly special? (Sorry.)

Well, if predictions are to be trusted, this neglected cousin of Cyber Monday will completely trounce today's records, seeing 151 million visits and a total spend of £676.5 million – four per cent more than is predicted for Cyber Monday.

Source: Econsultancy.

[Source: Experian]

4. Shoppers Wait Until the Evening to Spend, Spend, Spend

Unlike Black Friday, where online sales peak in the morning, trends show Cyber Monday sales reach their zenith between around seven and nine o'clock in the evening.

Source: IBM.

Interesting though they are, these are US statistics – remember if you’re in the UK as we are, things may not pan out in exactly the same way.

[Source: IBM]

5. You can't relax tomorrow, or Wednesday… or Thursday.

As we've seen, today is set to be a sales stormer. But that doesn't mean you can relax your budgets come tomorrow morning.

The day after Cyber Monday was the ninth busiest US online retail day in 2013 in terms of transactions, and we may well see a similar pattern in the UK.

In fact, here in the UK at least, there's an emerging trend for Internet-savvy shoppers to do their online Christmas spending throughout the month. ‘Manic Monday’ is the clearest example of this, but you can expect bigger-than-usual retail activity all the way up to the last Christmas shopping days.

PPC managers: Make sure you're spending enough to take advantage of this Cyber Monday 'shockwave', or you could end up missing out on valuable impressions and clicks.

[Sources: Experian, Econsultancy]

6. Smartphones Drive Traffic, But Tablets Spark Sales

IBM’s 2013 Cyber Monday Report has some interesting statistics to report about mobile device usage in the US on December 1.

Smartphone users accounted for an impressive 19.7% of online site traffic on Cyber Monday 2013, whilst tablet visits made up 11.5%. However, tablet users were more likely to convert, view more pages, spend longer on site and spend more money per order.

Source: IBM.

As more retailers switch to a ‘Mobile First’ mindset for their web design, it will be interesting to see if these figures change this year. Will we see more spend on smartphones as mobile user experience improves?

[Source: IBM]

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