by Fatema Mulla
One of the biggest dates in the global eCommerce calendar has come and gone - and now it’s time to review the numbers and have a look at the key takeaways and statistics from this year's Black Friday Weekend.
A Record Breaking Year for Shopify
This year, Shopify experienced their highest ever Black Friday sales - with more than $1million in sales per minute - a massive rise from their $555,716 last year, and up to 7,957 orders per minute at the peak of the day.
Cyber Monday was also quite successful, with $309,268 sales and 3,349 orders per minute.
What’s more, Shopify had a BFCM Live Data Dashboard - which showed live updates from around the world and real time data tracking consumer rush (which was exciting to just watch!). It also included a breakdown of what was selling more in product categories, and tracked sales and orders per minute on a live map of the world.
Image Credit: Shopify
What the Black Friday Data Shows
Black Friday 2017 saw an increase in mobile orders - seeing a continued drop in desktop orders.
66% of orders were made by phone or tablet, up from 58% in 2016, whilst desktop sales were only at 34% this year compared to 42% last year - showing a noticeable shift from desktop to mobile.
The biggest buys this year were in apparel, closely followed by accessories - with over 1 million items purchased in both those categories, with the lowest purchases in games at 43,713.
According to Shopify, the total estimated distance for Black Friday packages to be shipped surpassed 5 billion miles - farther than Pluto is from Earth!
Advantages of Using Shopify for Black Friday Weekend
As Shopify Plus Experts, we helped many of our clients experience a great Black Friday Weekend, and Shopify had a number of different resources that were extremely valuable in helping eCommerce stores to prepare for the period. These tools undoubtedly helped in allowing Shopify merchants to manage their store efficiently over BFCM.
Below are just some of the tools and functionality that Shopify had that were great for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
BFCM Toolbox- apps, articles, tools, webinars, experts insights and more, Shopify’s BFCM Toolbox had everything you’ll ever need to prepare for the Black Friday weekend.
Live View- real time analytics at your fingertips - this feature allowed you to see your stores performance live and view activity as it happened. Monitor sales and orders, track visitors, watch site activity etc, all in the very palm of your hand.
Image Credit: Shopify
Shopify Launchpad - a scheduling tool available all year round that will help you prepare your store for any events ahead of time and save you the stress and headaches by scheduling in sales, design updates and key messages. The Shopify Launchpad also allows you to track real time performance and consumer behaviour - a great way to monitor customers during such a hectic event.
Flow for Shopify Plus - an automation tool that makes things easier for your team by automating tasks, tracking and segmenting your customers, and even automatically hiding products that are out of stock. A simple tool to increase operational efficiency by simplifying hectic schedules ahead of Black Friday!
Gymshark’s Black Friday Story
Shopify also ensures less downtime - so you won’t need to worry about problems occurring when traffic surges during peak times on Black Friday weekend - preventing the issues that occurred when UK’s fastest growing eCommerce brand Gymshark used a Magento platform for their site in 2015.
After many months of waiting - their site was all set up and ready to go right before Black Friday 2015, only to have it crash almost immediately, causing GymShark to lose not only an estimated £100,000, but also the trust of their customers.
Ten months later, Gymshark switched to Shopify and continued to grow!
How Was Your Black Friday Weekend?
Black Friday 2017 seems to have been a successful period for many eCommerce stores over the world - across all platforms. If you need any help with preparing for next year’s Black Friday - or even January sales - and need some advice as to how Shopify can help, please feel free to get in touch.
