December 12, 2022
Well, well, well. We’re on the other side of Black Friday/Cyber week madness and I have to say, it shaped up even better for retailers than I’d predicted! I really do hope any brands reading this found the same!
There was a lot of worry around how Cyber week would pan out, when taking into consideration this being the first “proper” post-pandemic Black Friday, the UK on the knife-edge of a recession and Black Friday playing host to England and Wales World Cup matches too - there was a lot of uncertainty on how the day (and week!) would perform for retailers.
The data and insights are starting to come through, so I wanted to wrap up the key findings into this blog!
The Black Friday Insights
- Black Friday broke $9 billion in sales for the first time ever globally, with online sales of $9.12 billion (Adobe Analytics). This shows a slightly smaller uplift than previous years, however, still a significant uplift in today's climate - so many were expecting to see a flat year this year!
- On Thursday (the day before), shoppers also spent $5.29 billion online, up 2.9% vs last year. This showcases the volume of retailers across the board going earlier with discounts/promotions.
- To back the above stat up further, Barclaycard have stated that transactions had risen 3.5% in the week ahead of Black Friday compared with the year before - showing how spread out Black Friday/Cyber success has become on days prior to Black Friday itself.
- “Shopify merchants break records”. Black Friday 2022 sales on Shopify hit a record setting $3.36 billion globally on the day itself, seeing a 27% growth in POS sales. This demonstrates how successful the day was for retailers YoY.
- The top selling product categories were apparel & accessories, followed by health & beauty, and home & garden.
- The top selling countries were the usual 3: US, UK and Canada, with the top-selling cities being the main cities in those countries; London, New York, and Los Angeles.
- Black Friday saw 'Buy Now, Pay Later' orders shoot up 78% week on week, as well as 81% uplift in sales revenue on Black Friday, compared to the same day a week ago.
- The number of in-store shoppers was up 5% on last year (Springboard), which might explain why in the UK the Black Friday year on year growth online slowed ever so slightly compared to previous years. This was less than hoped, given this was the first year post-pandemic for the high street.
When checking Google Trends, whilst Black Friday search queries have lowered year on year, it is really interesting to note that from the first week of November this year, search demand for Black Friday has been higher than over the last 5 years - clearly demonstrating how user behaviour is changing, in combination with brands going earlier and earlier in November with Cyber promotions.
Our key takeaway when wrapping up Black Friday is that the huge sales day is certainly not dead! Whilst yearly increases may not be as high as we’ve seen previously (partially down to the Global Pandemic), they are increases nonetheless. We should be looking at November as a whole when reporting on Black Friday success, especially when so many retailers launch promotions way ahead of Black Friday too, to give a more accurate representation of how performance shaped up.
Psst... if you're keen to delve deeper and learn more about the Black Friday performance of retailers in your sector, you can access my presentation with exclusive insights using the button below!
