Bloomreach, the leader in commerce experience, reported an aggregated year-over-year (YoY) holiday sales increase of 40% for retailers and brands in North America using the Bloomreach Experience Platform (brX) to power their eCommerce experiences. Bloomreach powers over 25% of all US and UK eCommerce experiences for over 500 global brands and retailers.

The 2020 holiday shopping season kicked off in September as retailers moved their promotional calendars forward this year in order to smooth the impact on operations, and consumers looked to get ahead of concerns of delivery and product availability.

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Key highlights across Bloomreach’s customer base this holiday season include:

• A 40% increase in eCommerce sales in 2020 vs. 2019 among global retailers and brands in NA. Online site traffic was up 62% for North American sites.
• In contrast, UK/EMEA Bloomreach customers were impacted by macro-trends related to COVID-19 measures and Brexit, reflected in only a 9% YoY sales increase and a 35% site YoY traffic increase in the region.
• The online retail segments with the greatest year-over-year sales increases during Holiday 2020 were in grocery (72% YoY sales increase), home goods (55% YoY sales increase) and apparel (34% YoY sales increase).
• The top site search terms during the 2020 holiday season across Bloomreach’s customer base were: 1) Christmas, 2) toilet paper, 3) pajamas, 4) paper towels, 5) joggers, 6) masks, 7) Black Friday, 8) socks, 9) Playstation 5 and 10) leggings – a departure from previous years, in part due to the inclusion of personal protective and COVID-related terms.

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“2020 was an online shopping season like no other we have seen before. The pandemic drove significant changes in how consumers used the web to do nearly all their holiday shopping this year, and retailers and brands responded by adapting their operations to facilitate that – not only through delivery but also through their stores using curb-side pickup and courier delivery,” said Brian Walker, Chief Strategy Officer at Bloomreach.

“We also saw the increased importance of great site search and the use of personalization to drive product discovery as consumers hunted for the perfect gift. Also certainly notable is the difference in North American eCommerce performance from that of the UK and EMEA sites, which is tied to the virus and economic situations in the respective regions. Of course, we’re all eager to see how these customer behaviors continue and evolve in the new year, even as we all hope to gain control over the pandemic that drove these significant changes in 2020.”

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