Bloomreach sees 40% YoY traffic increase during 2019 Holiday shopping peak period

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- December 23, 2019 -- Bloomreach, a leading digital customer and commerce experience software provider, today published a new report, titled “2019 Cyber Weekend eCommerce Trend Report,” that reveals search, revenue and device trends for  Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday, also referred to as "Cyber 5". The report finds that compared to last year, there was a 40% increase in online traffic during this busy holiday shopping period. Traffic peaked on Cyber Monday when the Bloomreach system handled over 9,000 queries per second.

Looking at the way people shopped during this year's Cyber 5 period, Bloomreach identified key trends across retailers in the US and UK:

More (online) traffic over the weekend: The US saw a 13% increase in YoY traffic across the entire weekend. In contrast, the UK saw a much higher increase of 63% during the same period of time.

Black Friday is the busier eCommerce day in the UK: In the UK, consumers spent significantly more on Black Friday than on Cyber Monday, which indicates that Black Friday in the UK is as much an e-commerce as an in store sales event, if not more. In the US however, with more deals online on Cyber Monday, consumers spent significantly more on that day than on Black Friday.

Shoppers search on their phones: Smartphones proved to be the preferred channel to search and browse for products and showed a huge increase in traffic on all days and across both geo's whereas tablet traffic declined by around 30%.

But buy on a desktop: While mobile accounts for the highest increase in traffic in both the US and UK, desktop remains the key driver of revenue, accounting in some cases for nearly twice as much revenue as mobile. 

Heavy searchers are your best customers: Visitors who use the search bar on a website are more likely to purchase and are also accounting for a higher average order value.

US shopping habits are practical: US consumers were mostly searching and purchasing very practical winter wear, such as hoodies, leggings, sweaters, and cardigans.

Formal wear is a top priority in the UK: The UK seemed to be getting ready to party this Holiday season with searches for sequin tops and dresses, holiday dresses, and party wear.

The complete findings are available here:

https://www.bloomreach.com/en/cyber-weekend-ecommerce-trends-2019

"Online Holiday shopping has been building over the past 10 years and continues to grow exponentially," said Raj De Datta, CEO and co-founder of Bloomreach. "To capitalize on this huge shopping event, businesses need to look on how their visitors are using their website and respond to that. Are your customers using the search box? If yes, that means they know what they want, so it’s critical your search results develiver a relevant, personalized and engaging experience. Retailers and brands that prioritze personalization at the forefront will create happy and loyal customers during the holiday season."

While the stakes, and consequently the expectations, are even higher than usual for retailers during this period, with any downtime having a direct revenue impact for our clients, Bloomreach handled the Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales event weekend without any issues and maintained a 100% uptime for all of its customers. During the holiday period, the company supported more than 20% of all global ecommerce search queries. In the past year, Bloomreach served over 3.2 billion page visits to its digital experience platform.

Earlier this month, Bloomreach published a Black-Friday specific report, titled “2019 Black Friday eCommerce Trend Report.” Download the report here: https://www.bloomreach.com/en/black-friday-ecommerce-trends-2019