October 15, 2009
By the ZippyCart Shopping Carts Content Team
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are two of the biggest online shopping days of the year for savvy shoppers looking to get a great deal. As more shoppers stay home to browse ecommerce stores more and more deals are appearing online. The old way of getting a deal on Black Friday was to wait in line very early in the morning to be one of the few that got the special item for an amazing price. Online shopping has allowed some retailers to try and launch holiday specials as early as the day after Halloween. This technique has not been very successful as the majority online shoppers do not start hunting for holiday deals until right around Thanksgiving.
As such, the big question on the minds on online shoppers and ecommerce stores is which day is really best for sales? According to new research conducted by Yahoo, online retail sales were up 147% on Black Friday compared to other days in November. This was over double the increase that online retailers reported for Cyber Monday. Some may be surprised to learn this fact, but it makes more sense when you learn how Cyber Monday became a buzz word. Most feel the term derived from the influx of people going back to work on Monday after Thanksgiving to finish the last minute shopping they forgot from Black Friday. The only downside to Cyber Monday is that the deals are superior on Black Friday and often match most of what you could get at the normal retail storefront. However, retailers push the start times back a bit so in fact many people also begin to search heavily and often purchase on Thanksgiving. Most people have a lot of free time after a big Thanksgiving meal and often have not had time yet to do any holiday shopping, so it is the perfect time for ecommerce stores to start promoting specials and capitalize on as much traffic as possible.
Nick was born and raised in California, but has been working the dot com scene in Seattle for many years. He co-founded ZippyCart back in 2009, and now works here full-time. Nick wears many hats at ZippyCart, including producing content for our Ecommerce News blog. Nick loves photography and the outdoors, so when not working on ZippyCart you can find him out and about in Seattle.
