Yesterday we were all impressed with the statistics that the Black Friday 2009 brought us, but the Cyber Monday stats that have been circulated today have clearly overshadowed the pre-Monday records. In the DaySpring.com’s affiliate program, for example, we’ve seen an utterly amazing surge of affiliate-referred sales where the Cyber Monday results exceeded those of the previous two days (the most fruitful days in the pre-Cyber Monday 2009 history of the program) combined. Also, while there is no unified name for the Tuesday that follows the Cyber Monday, it definitely deserves one. Having examined the statistics across several affiliate programs I can say that in the majority of them within less than 20 hours of this Cyber (?) Tuesday we’ve already registered better results than those seen on Black Friday.
I hope you’re enjoying the momentum at least in some capacity (be it as an affiliate marketer, a merchant, or a consumer), and here’s some more interesting data about the Cyber Monday 2009:
Online sales were up 14% above Cyber Monday 2008, says the website sales tracking firm Coremetrics, which represents 500 major retailers, including Macy’s and Nordstrom. The data were mirrored in results for sites including Buy.com, which had more orders in an hour from 1 to 2 p.m. ET than ever in its 12-year history, and eBags.com, which had a 53% increase in sales Monday [more at USAToday.com | bold font mine].
Referencing Akamai’s Net Usage Index which ongoingly traces and monitors “the world’s online retail habits”, Jennifer Van Grove of Mashable.com posted this screenshot/chart:
Jennifer continued:
…As the graph above indicates, however, traffic peaked at 7,666,119 million visitors per minute. This peak is higher than the 6.69 million visitors per minute high on Black Friday, and it appears that the trend is still on the upswing. CNN also posits also posits that “about 96.5 Americans plan to shop online Monday, up from 85 million in 2008, according to the National Retail Federation.” [bold font belongs to the post’s author; the “million” after the digits should have been omitted, but it certainly adds the emphasis]
It is also interesting to note the marketing and PR coverage that Black Friday and Cyber Monday received in Social Media. As @prman summarized the Schwartz Communications report: “Black Friday crushes Cyber Monday via Social Media… but Cyber Monday does better communicating deals”.
Finally, as stated in the beginning of this post the Cyber Monday aura is still upon the e-commerce world. Twitter, for example, is chock full of tweets which go like this: “Cyber Monday is extended the whole month of December!” or “Cyber Monday Sale is now Cyber Week Sale.” Everyone (merchants, affiliates, and consumers too) is still very much in the Cyber Monday mood, which means more sales are yet to come; definitely not of the per-day magnitude that we’ve witnessed on the Monday, but still.