In numbers: Amazon's second annual Prime Day

Hailed as a Black Friday-style retail event, Amazon Prime Day gives paying Prime customers – and shoppers that have signed up for a free trial – access to exclusive discounts across products ranging from travel accessories to gadgets and fashion items.

Here’s a look at some facts and figures on the scale of this year’s Amazon Prime Day and the success of last year’s event.

• Over 100,000 products are set to be discounted for the day, spanning the majority of its product categories.
• Amazon customers across the UK, the US, Spain, Japan, Italy, Germany, France, Canada, Belgium, and Austria will all be able to participate.
• The 24-hour event will start at midnight in the UK with new deals added throughout the day as often as every five minutes.
• The number of small businesses participating in Amazon Prime Day has risen 80% year-on-year, and Amazon Marketplace sellers will comprise more than 30% of Prime Day deals offered in the UK this year.
• In the week leading up to Amazon Prime Day, the etail giant has been offering daily discounts for shoppers across home, lifestyle, beauty and tech categories.
• According to digital market intelligence firm SimilarWeb, Prime Day was the UK’s sixth-biggest shopping day last year, notching up 29.1 million visits to Amazon’s website across mobile and desktop devices and beating Valentine’s Day and Singles Day in terms of online traffic.
• The Amazon Fire TV Stick was the biggest-selling product for UK shoppers on Prime Day last year, followed by the six-inch Kindle device.
• During last year’s inaugural Prime Day event, 398 items were ordered per second worldwide.
• The retail behemoth is allowing Prime shoppers to track items on their wishlist for discounts on Prime Day via its mobile app.
• Amazon has confirmed that one of the first items to be discounted will be Trunki children’s suitcases and Gibson guitars, both of which will be discounted by 20%.
• While UK shoppers sought out tech bargains last year, European shoppers were more fashion-focused as Croc sandals topped the list of most-bought items for both German and Austrian shoppers.