The last wave of the peak season! Cyber ​​Monday sales will exceed Black Friday

It is the Black Friday Cyber ​​Monday Week, which is also the last big promotion of this year's peak season. According to the data of the National Retail Federation, more than 166 million people plan to shop between Black Friday and Cyber ​​Monday, an increase of nearly 8 million people over last year.

On the first day of Amazon's Black Friday event, the sellers were shocked by the low sales. However, on Black Friday, the sales increased significantly, and many sellers returned home with full loads. However, during this period, many sellers reported that Amazon's advertising system was seriously delayed, affecting budget management. Will this situation continue until Cyber ​​Monday?

Bigger sales opportunities are still to come. Adobe Analytics predicts that Cyber ​​1 sales this year are expected to reach $11.2 billion, surpassing Black Friday to become the largest online shopping day of the year. Some sellers also believe that judging from the overall performance of the past few years, Cyber ​​1 sales are likely to surpass Black Friday, which is exciting.

Reversal, Black Friday online sales hit a new high

Black Friday is one of the biggest shopping festivals of the year, and sellers are naturally looking forward to it. However, after the Black Friday promotion on Amazon.com started this week, many sellers experienced a period of dismal sales, and lamented that "this is the worst Black Friday season in history."

The reason is that Amazon's Black Friday event started on November 24, which was Thanksgiving Day. People were too busy partying to shop online, which led to a cold sales on the first day of the event. In addition, the popular World Cup also diverted consumers' attention.

As Black Friday officially arrived, the situation gradually turned around, orders on e-commerce platforms poured in, and sellers breathed a sigh of relief: it felt like a big sale. When someone saw the order in the morning, the first thing they said was "Awesome."

A seller saw from the various seller groups he belonged to that the order volume of most people increased by 2-3 times, and the top sellers or those doing flash sales increased by more than 5-6 times.

One seller said that Black Friday was very successful, with the main account he was responsible for having sales of $380,000 and all accounts having sales of $550,000 in total. Another independent seller was also quite satisfied, with a total of 309 orders and 325 sales on the 24th, twice as much as usual; and 685 orders and 719 sales on the 25th, more than four times the usual performance. Larger sellers were happy to receive more than 10,000 orders, and some sellers received more than 1,000 orders on Black Friday, reaching the first small peak since they started working on Amazon.

However, Black Friday performance cannot be achieved overnight, and luck plays a limited role. This promotion is more of an amplification of the sellers' daily business conditions. "Only those with relatively high keywords can feel the obvious peak season, even if there is no event. In larger categories, products that do not have stable keywords in a good position can only get some benefits, and it is difficult to make a temporary comeback through advertising." A seller analyzed. This big promotion also confirmed that the platform traffic has become more and more head-oriented.

During the promotion, sellers will inevitably make price concessions. However, some sellers raised their prices during the promotion. The main reason was that they were short of stock and wanted to reserve inventory for the subsequent Cyber ​​Monday. Therefore, they raised prices to avoid out-of-stock. In addition, the sales situation was relatively good, and sellers also intended to retain more profits.

The sales feedback from sellers is consistent with the overall situation of Black Friday. According to Adobe Analytics, the deep discounts in the context of high inflation will attract consumers, and US online spending is expected to set a record on Black Friday, exceeding $9 billion for the first time, and shoppers will spend $9 billion to $9.2 billion online.

People were eager to buy products like Apple Watches and AirPods, smart speakers and TVs, espresso machines and game consoles, and toys from the likes of Funko . The toys category was in huge demand, with discounts of up to 33%.

In addition, mobile shopping also hit a new high this year, with smartphone sales accounting for 55% of online sales on Thanksgiving and expected to account for 53% of total Black Friday sales. Optimizing the display of mobile product pages is a task that sellers cannot ignore.

At the same time, many problems have occurred on the Amazon platform, among which the most complained by sellers is the delay in the advertising system.

Amazon advertising system has a bug

During the promotion period, many sellers found that their advertising expenses were very low, and their ACoS was surprisingly good, much better than usual. Some sellers reminded that this was a data bug, and that they had to click on the search term to see the actual expenses.

Data anomalies are reflected in several aspects: 1. Data delay, data from a few hours ago or even a day ago cannot be seen; 2. Data errors, such as 6 orders after 3 clicks; 18 dollars spent on a budget of 80 dollars, but the page shows that it is overspent, or as time goes by, the cost and ACoS are getting lower and lower. There are even sellers whose advertising order conversion rate is as high as 110%, and they themselves shake their heads when they see it, and they don’t believe that they have such a high level.

Affected by this, sellers not only cannot see the real-time advertising effects, but may also be blindly optimistic and run ads crazily. "Another consequence of data delay is that the ACoS data will look very good, and you will confidently increase the budget and bid crazily. When the data is updated two days later, it will all be charity." A seller said, "Sometimes I even suspect that Amazon is doing it on purpose."

Experienced sellers pointed out that there may be a 24-hour delay in advertising data, but the advertising status is up to date, and the actual cost and ACoS can be checked through the ad slot . "In the ad slot, you can see how many times the ad was clicked and how much money was spent. The data in this place is always updated."

Intuitive advertising data has lost its reference value, and sellers who don’t know how to do it can only adjust prices in the dark. Even if they know how to see the real data, they can’t help but feel annoyed. In desperation, some people joked that they could take screenshots and show off their performance.

Black Friday has passed, and now sellers are worried that this bug will continue until Cyber ​​Monday. After all, advertising errors during big sales are not isolated cases. During the Black Friday event on the European site that started last week, some sellers discovered the same advertising system problem.

Online sales will be even stronger

Adobe predicts that the five-day Cyber ​​Week from Thanksgiving to Cyber ​​Monday is expected to generate $34.8 billion in online spending, accounting for 16.3% of the November-December holiday spending. Cyber ​​Monday sales are expected to increase 5.1% from last year to $11.2 billion and surpass Black Friday to become the largest online shopping day of the year.

The industry also has the same view. Many sellers have high expectations for Cyber ​​Monday, and even believe that Cyber ​​Monday will have more traffic than Black Friday. "On Black Friday and Cyber ​​Monday, the active period of online traffic is from Friday to next Monday or Tuesday in the United States, and Cyber ​​Monday is the top traffic," said a seller. Another seller agreed: Cyber ​​Monday's overall performance is better than Black Friday.

In fact, due to the overlap of Thanksgiving and the weekend, consumers' online shopping on Black Friday is relatively limited, but Cyber ​​Monday will attract more people to shop online. In the past few years, online retailers have found that sales have been rising on the Monday after Thanksgiving.

A poll of North Carolina residents found that 40 percent of them shopped on Cyber ​​Monday, while only 20 percent did so on Black Friday. They will spend an average of $859 on gifts, food, decorations and other holiday-related items this holiday season.

Experts believe that the increase in traffic on Cyber ​​Monday may be because consumers have faster or more secure Internet connections at work, so they shop there; or they cannot complete all their shopping during Thanksgiving weekend. Analysts expect that many consumers will also shop at home on Cyber ​​Monday after get off work or when their children are asleep. Whatever the reason and the time, consumers will go online in groups on Cyber ​​Monday.

Sellers can look forward to the upcoming Cyber ​​Monday!