December 21, 2009
By the ZippyCart Shopping Carts Content Team
As predicted, December 15th was an incredibly busy shopping day resulting from many consumers waiting until their mid-month paycheck to purchase gifts for the holiday season. According to a report from comScore, online sales grew 4% from early November through December 18th while brick and mortar store sales remained relatively flat when compared to 2008. December 15th stuck out as the largest sales day in the entire period with $913 million in revenue, making it the the largest revenue day in ecommerce history!
Various factors contributed to this great holiday shopping season, and some have suggested that the down economy was even a contributing factor. With people hoping to cut their costs, many shoppers chose to save gas and parking costs by shopping online this holiday season. On top of this, many online retailers offered amazing deals on their products by cutting their margins in half. This was a cost that big merchants like Amazon and Wal-Mart were willing to pay, but it severely undercut small online etailers trying to compete.
Sales began to die down on the 18th of the month, as almost all free shipping deals ended, leaving shoppers less enticed to make a convenient purchase. Sales were relatively higher than expected over the weekend of the 18th, though, as a result of a snowstorm in the East that forced many consumers to remain indoors for their last minute shopping.
Amazon and Wal-Mart set the trend for sales this holiday season as the two went head to head in an ecommerce war of bargains, email campaigns, and advertising. Amazon still came out ahead with more than double the site traffic and revenue. To further its lead, Amazon has announced a new free shipping deal with its Kindle ereader, offering consumers free 2 day shipping on any Kindle purchase now through December 22nd. This comes after Amazon’s recent announcement that Kindle sales were higher in December than ever before.
As the holiday season comes to a close, will ecommerce be able to ride this wave of good luck? Time will only tell whether consumers will flock to their favorite online stores for post-holiday bargains or if this shopping frenzy will die down as we enter a new year.
Scott is an avid fan of all things ecommerce. His claim to fame is that he "puts the Zip in ZippyCart." He considers himself the world-wide number one reader of TechCrunch, C|Net, and The Ecommerce Times. Scott has worked in the SEO industry for many years, but found himself always shifting his focus to review sites and ecommerce blogs. When we decided to start the ZippyCart Ecommerce news, Scott was an obvious fit. He handles most of our OpEds as he is a very opinionated guy. Scott is also our Twitter guy, so don't hesitate to send him a tweet if you see him online.
