Cyber Monday failed to lure shoppers this year, according to data, as consumers shopped for deals online across the Black Friday weekend.
Online transactions on Cyber Monday declined by a “staggering” 14% year on year, according to PCA Predict data.
And while PCA recorded 5,010,000 online transactions on Cyber Monday this year, this was far exceeded by the 9,677,660 generated on Black Friday.
Live tracking showed that the morning got off to a “sluggish start”.
“It would seem that the days when consumers would be willing to get up early to bag a bargain are gone,” said PCA Predict head of marketing Chris Boaz.
Online purchasing peaked at 4:38pm as many people shopped from their desks towards the end of the working day, but dropped dramatically after 7pm.
Why? Shift to online
Across the whole Black Friday weekend – as well as the drawn-out run-up to the discounting event – more shoppers opted to snap up bargains online, which has taken the shine off Cyber Monday.
On Black Friday itself, footfall was down 3.6% in physical shopping locations, but ecommerce sales jumped 6% year on year according to PCA Predict.
Likewise, online sales last Saturday jumped 18%, and 6% on Sunday.
Boaz said: “We saw more and more consumers shopping online over Black Friday, blurring the lines between the two shopping events.
”While Cyber Monday’s decline this year is notable, it points to a wider trend whereby consumers are much more empowered and content to spend their money when they want to.
”Instead of being driven to spend their money on allotted days, like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, they are instead taking advantage of retailers’ decision to extend sales periods.”
See more: Black Friday Week performance tracker
Springboard marketing and insights director Diane Wehrle agreed that “Cyber Monday did not feature this year”, as both footfall and online transaction volumes took a tumble.
Footfall dropped by 8.9% compared with the same day last year – more than double the 4% drop forecast.
Click-and-collect
While footfall was down year on year on Black Friday itself, it picked up as the weekend progressed – down 0.9% on Saturday and up 0.8% on Sunday.
This was driven, in part, by the trend towards click-and-collect and consumers collecting their online purchases in-store on Saturday and Sunday.
“The continuation of discounting over the weekend was reinforced by a greater rise in online transaction volumes on both Saturday and Sunday (up 24% on Saturday and 26% on Sunday), some of which will have permeated through to footfall via click-and-collect,” Wehrle explained.
Spread out sales
Boaz concluded that a more even spread of sales across the golden quarter will serve to help retailers.
“What this year’s online sales data shows is that we’ve now moved into a golden quarter for retailers, which won’t tie them solely to specific days to try to get consumers to spend their hard-earned money.
”Instead, the sales period will be much more evenly spread out in the run-up to the holiday season which proves to be more sustainable for retailers and their supply chains,” he said.
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