Nov
27
Surprises about Black Friday
Posted by: deanbillings | November 27, 2012 | Leave a Comment
Personally, my Black Friday wasn’t as exciting as a Wal-Mart stampede, but Online sales during the Black Friday weekend topped $1B, showing incredible growth – a 26% growth year over year. This is during a period where overall Black Friday sales overall of $11.2B fell 1.8%. The two overriding stories from Black Friday are as one blogger put it, mobile impresses and social depresses.
Social Media Sales Down
Most of the articles regarding social media’s ineffectiveness cite an IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark from this week that found that social media in general fell in importance as a channel to online sales.
In fact , Twitter generated zero percent of Black Friday Sales! Much of IBM’s echo chamber focused on the thought that Twitter’s influence could be more general, influencing decisions or helping to create demand but not on the direct path to sales. This seems like a parallel to the complaint that retails outlets have about being used as evaluation and testing centers for sales that go to online vendors. I guess the first lesson is that it pays to be at the bottom of that funnel, not the top, since a company must capture value in addition to just creating it.
The other lesson is about integration of sales channels and media. Too many Facebook and Twitter pages have difficulty striking a balance between directing users to sales and an engaging (not irritating) experience.
Mobile Sales Up
On the other hand, Black Friday was another exemplification of the growth in mobile sales. The most purchased items included books, clothing, and e-books. Competition from price-checking applications and mobile commerce applications has been around for some time. However, the reasons for late adoption cited by these studies seem like they haven’t changed in some time: awkward shopping experience on the phone, concerns over credit card info, and poor connections.
Although, maybe one could have predicted all this by comparing Apple and Facebook stock prices .