The shape of Black Friday changed dramatically this year, as what has traditionally been a predominantly online event drove shoppers back into physical stores.
Against tough comparatives from 2020, when stricter social distancing restrictions boosted ecommerce sales, traffic to websites declined markedly this year during the crucial four-day cyber weekend.
Although the likes of Amazon, eBay, Argos and Currys capitalised on the discounting bonanza by attracting millions of online shoppers, the number of customers visiting their websites slipped substantially.
Amazon predictably emerged as the most popular retail website in the UK during the four-day period, racking up more than 61 million hits. But that total was 18.4% down on last year, according to data from online analytics specialist SimilarWeb.
Marketplace rival eBay was some distance behind in second place, after traffic to its website dropped 23.2% to just under 36 million hits.
Argos in third and Currys in fourth suffered even steeper declines of 28% and 33.4% respectively, the SimilarWeb data revealed, while John Lewis slipped out of the top five following a 32.4% erosion of cyber weekend traffic.
Retailers in the upper echelons of this year’s table were not the only ones impacted by falling numbers of ecommerce shoppers. Indeed, 47 of the 50 busiest websites during Black Friday weekend suffered year-on-year declines in online traffic.
Pureplays Very and Notonthehighstreet were among those hardest hit by the fall in website hits, with traffic to their platforms tumbling 39.2% and 47.2% respectively.
Debenhams, which collapsed into administration in January but retained an online presence after being rescued by Boohoo, tumbled from 10th to 34th in the ranking after losing an eye-watering 69% of its ecommerce traffic.
At the other end of the spectrum, the trio of River Island, Superdry and Zalando were the only retailers in the top 50 to register gains compared to 2020.
Superdry’s 13.3% spike in online traffic year-on-year catapulted the fashion operator into 47th place, from 64th a year ago.
Zalando was the 49th busiest website during the Black Friday weekend, having been 63rd last year, while River Island jumped from 41st to 33rd.
Who will be UK retail’s Christmas number one?
Following such muted ecommerce traffic across Black Friday and Cyber Monday, how will December play out online for UK retail?
Check out retail-week.com in January, when we will once again join forces with SimilarWeb to rank the 50 busiest websites during Christmas 2021.
To find out which retailer emerged as online’s Christmas number one last year, click here.
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To find out, watch our virtual panel discussion, The future of the Mega-Sale-day event, in partnership with Criteo.
Our expert panel features Heal’s Customer and Ecommerce Director David Kohn, former Schuh Director of Ecommerce and Customer Experience Sean McKee, and Criteo UK Account Strategist Sean Malkin
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