Stats on Site Performance, User Profiles and User Navigation Show Shoppers are Persistent about Taking Advantage of Deals During Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Among Other Findings

Experience analytics leader Contentsquare released in-depth, global data on online holiday shopping with a focus on the retail fashion sector.  The data, which was collected from Nov. 15 through Dec. 24 across 314 million user sessions, looks at site performance, users profiles and user navigation, and how they change during Black Friday, Cyber Monday and the whole holiday season.

“Our data reveals many interesting user behavior trends that retailers would benefit from making note of and refining their online user experiences accordingly to ultimately increase sales and revenue,” said Aimee Stone Munsell, Contentsquare’s CMO. “For example, we found that shoppers are persistent about taking advantage of deals and getting their shopping done during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. This held true even though these online events came later in the season, so it’s clear people’s habits are now conditioned to these retail ‘holidays’.”

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The data includes metrics like conversion rate, average cart size, traffic by device, and percentage of new visitors, bounce rate, number of pages seen and session time. Please see the data below:

CONVERSION RATE 

The 2019 shopping season recorded an average retail conversion rate of 2.85%. There was a peak in conversions during the Black Friday and Cyber Monday period, with the average conversion rate reaching 4.04%. This reflected a 41% increase to the average conversion rate during Black Friday/Cyber Monday versus the rest of the shopping season (Nov. 15 to Dec. 24).

AVERAGE CART

The average cart during the whole shopping season was $150.56 in the retail sector, however there was a peak during Black Friday/Cyber Monday period, when the average cart went up 10.54% to $166.43. The difference was even bigger on mobile, with the average cart going up 11.89% during Black Friday/Cyber Monday (compared to the whole holiday period).

TRAFFIC BY DEVICE

Mobile drives the lion’s share of traffic in the retail sector, accounting for 68% of traffic during the whole 2019 shopping season. Contentsquare’s data showed a 1% increase in mobile traffic between 2018 and 2019 and a 6% decrease in desktop traffic. The biggest change year to year was the tablet, whose traffic increased by 21% yet still only accounted for 5% of the total traffic.

PERCENTAGE OF NEW VISITORS 

More than half of holiday shopping season traffic was from new visitors. However, during the Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales, the proportion of returning visitors in the traffic mix increased by 2%.

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BOUNCE RATE 

The average bounce rate in the retail sector during the holiday season is 39.20% — compared to 48%, the average bounce rate for the whole year. During Black Friday/Cyber Monday, the bounce rate was 4.43% lower than the holiday period as a whole, coming in at 37.46%. The mobile bounce rate is always higher and it came in at 41% during the whole holiday period.

NUMBER OF PAGEVIEWS AND SESSION TIME

The average number of pages viewed during the whole holiday period was 6.33 with an average session time of 7 minutes. During the Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales, the average number of pages viewed went up by 8% and the average session time was higher by 20%. Looking at the average number of seconds spent by page, Contentsquare found that visitors spend 11.33% more time on each page during Black Friday/Cyber Monday than they do during the holiday period as a whole.

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