Distil.ai, the business intelligence platform that helps ecommerce businesses to understand customers’ behaviour and boost sales has crunched the Black Friday/Cyber Monday (BFCM) weekend data and can now share its findings for the UK and US markets. The data gives an insight into customer shopping habits, helping sellers navigate the previously murky waters of consumer behaviour.
Distil.ai has pooled its data from the BFCM weekend across the USA and UK, analysing data from a sample of 40,000+ online orders to dig into the online shopping habits of the general public, distilling it to understandable outputs that tell some unexpected stories.
Key findings include:
UK shoppers prepared for Black Friday week, holding off in the weeks prior and extracting the most value with huge sales increases. UK stores took three times as much revenue over the period than the weekly average for the rest of the year. And it seems not much has changed in this regard since 2022, when stores saw a similar uplift in sales.
This illustrates a 258% uplift in 2022 with a 250% uplift in 2023 on the rolling weekly average in stores trading in GBP.
In the US, although there were positive sales for the BFCM weekend, shoppers held back a little less than in the UK, meaning that the home of Black Friday hasn’t performed as well. Does the US ecommerce market need a new approach to Black Friday sales?
This illustrates a 113% uplift in 2022 with a 42% uplift in 2023 on the rolling weekly average in stores trading in USD.
The power of the repeat customer
Contrary to popular belief, Black Friday is not all about a quick sale to new customers. In fact, Distil’s data showcases the importance of looking after repeat customers, who equated to almost half the revenue gained by UK stores and more than half in the US over BFCM weekend.
Furthermore, if a store welcomes a shopper, new or repeat – they have one chance to convert. Re-targeting customers once they’ve purchased on Black Friday with Cyber Monday deals is near-to pointless in marketing terms according to Distil’s data.
US V UK, daily performance
USD shoppers started slow, recovering from Thanksgiving with strong shopping figures on Sunday and Cyber Monday having missed the rush on Black Friday and Saturday. Compared to UK shoppers who checked out the highest value baskets on Black Friday compared with any day of the BFCM weekend.
Overall, shoppers’ average BFCM weekend spend was up, by as much as 26% in the US audience.
It is widely known that data matters, but customer behaviour data should be considered the new gold, and generating value from the action points illustrated – the new gold rush. Distil customers are hungry for this analysis because they can assess their own performance against a larger cohort and pinpoint opportunities for further growth.
Gerry McNicol, CEO and Founder at Distil said on the data, “Our Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend data is fascinating when you look at the big picture, but what excites me more is that we can see so many customer stories – the brand loyalists, the annual bargain hunters and the long lost contacts who forgot they were ever customers. We’ve been working with several Distil customers to dig deeper into their individual store data and we’re seeing some repeat customers come back after as long as six and a half years as a result of this year’s BFCM activity. I was amazed to see the difference in spend between the USA and UK audiences, and the timings over BFCM weekend when the highest value baskets checked out. I’m pleased to deliver these sorts of tangible outcomes from the data to our customers so they can turn them into action points and continue to grow their businesses.”
Data methodology statement
This data was drawn on Tuesday 28th November 2023 from a sample of 126 Shopify stores worldwide and connected to the Distil AI Business Analytics App to produce a data set of 40,000+ orders. The analysis methodology of the average order value was to take an average of the metric for the individual store and then average across all stores in the sample.
Conclusions
Data is never black and white – it tells a story, and what’s crucial for a story? Context.
For an ecommerce store, there is no knowledge of higher value than that of its customers, customers keep the doors open and drive the growth. Once you know them intimately – through data they’ve opted-in for you to have of course – you can provide them with exactly the right offer, through the right marketing channel at the right time, hugely improving their retail experience, and cementing your position as a shop of value to them – cementing them as a return customer to drive this data set for Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend, 2024.