Black Friday: The Brightest Day In The US Last Week

Black Friday, American’s starting point for Christmas shopping following the Thanksgiving holiday; witness a significant figure in online sales this year, $648 million (£417 million).

ComScore reported this Black Friday sale to be a 9% increase in comparison to last year Black Friday. The report further indicates several increases in online spending in comparison to last year within the US.

For instance, during the recent seasonal holiday in November, an expenditure of approximately $11.64 billion (£7.49 billion) has been reached, which is a 13% increase from the previous year.
Additionally, a further increase in online sales was reported on Thanksgiving Day; at $407 million (£262 million), 28% more than last year.

Gian Fulgon, chairman of comScore, explained this year’s increase in online spending by stating: “Although Black Friday is known for the flurry of activity occurring in brick-and-mortar retail stores, online shopping is increasingly becoming the refuge of those preferring to avoid the crowds and long lines”.

He further points out that the online sales figures is the largest spending this year to date in the US, and that the Thanksgiving figures has never reached such amount in the past, due to “low buying activity” historically on this day.

The reason behind this surge has been explicated as deriving from the influence “online channel” affect offline shopping activities. Consumers were utilising online resources on Black Friday to plan in advance for the day’s events.

Numerous retailers utilise this Black Friday as an internet marketing strategy to boost their sales. Therefore, whilst consumers researched on offline deals; they would have exposed to more lucrative online deals.

ComScore reports also illustrated that the number of visitors in coupon sites was 3.6 million, a 4% increase from the previous year. Furthermore, increases of 16% to 7.4 million visitors were especially visiting the Black Friday category on the sites.

Top Site Visited On Black Friday for Black Friday:

BlackFriday.info        630,000 visitors
CouponCabin.com     543,000 visitors
RetailMeNot.com      332,000 visitors 
Groupon.com           332,000 visitors

Pipon Search Solutions continue to advise our clients to utilise seasonal events as paid search marketing approaches, to drive their sales and increase their ROI.

However, Black Friday is not the only online seasonal event expected to successful gain this year, Cyber Monday is another event, which should also be interesting to utilises as an approach.