November 25th and 28th are the Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping festivals respectively in 2024, which are also the two most important and close e-commerce festivals in the year. NetElixir has released their 2024 holiday e-commerce sales forecast calendar, and their data forecasts show that compared to last year’s sales figures, the total e-commerce sales of the November and December holiday shopping period in the country will grow by 7% year-on-year, with total online sales likely to exceed 20% of total retail sales nationwide.
Online sales around the holiday season are expected to experience the highest year-over-year growth and are expected to exceed 20% per day. According to Wunderkind’s report, 71% of U.S. consumers, unaffected by occasional supply chain disruptions and inflation, plan to spend this shopping season. Well-known e-commerce sites such as Amazon have already started promotions.
In the early days of the 2024 shopping festival, electronic products due to shortages of chips and raw materials led the out-of-stocks first, and the rest such as jewelry, clothing, home and gardening, and pet products also had online out-of-stock conditions, which cannot meet the needs of consumers and affected sales.
According to Bluecore’s survey on Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping behavior in 2024, compared with other categories, sporting goods had the highest sales on Black Friday, and household goods, featured gifts and consumer electronics have the most orders on Cyber Monday 2024.
Combined with the sales data of previous shopping seasons, sporting goods have shown growth in the shopping season for three consecutive years. In 2024, merchants in this type of business need to stock up. In addition, clothing, accessories, electronics, toys, food, and beverage categories should also be considered.
For merchants, how do stand out in the shopping holiday?
Source: cnbc.com
Black Friday and Cyber Monday have always been the peak sales season that merchants look forward to the most in a year, and sellers need to review the sales situation and records in recent years. In this way, you can prepare the quantity and price of products needed for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, formulate promotion and discount plans in advance, understand the information of competing products, better sell the products, and avoid the backlog of goods.
In this shopping season, sales will gradually increase, and even some products will have a blowout. Faced with such a situation, merchants need to increase some inventory quantities based on historical sales data to prevent products from being popular but unable to supply.
In the peak season, it is normal for the transaction orders to increase, but it also causes a certain pressure on the logistics industry. All of these potential factors may result in the delayed shipment of goods or delayed delivery of goods to buyers. Merchants can reserve a number of reliable logistics in advance to prevent delayed delivery, because delays may affect the shopping experience of their customers.
Brand marketing and promotion are also essential. Merchants can put products with high click-through rates or popular products in prominent positions on the advertising page about a month before Black Friday, to attract traffic to their brands, and then convert consumption, driving purchases. Large-scale advertisements can also be placed within a month after the end of Black Friday and Cyber Monday to attract consumers to repurchase.
Buy now, pay later service is becoming more and more popular. In 2024, revenue on BNPL increased by more than 20% compared with 2020. In addition, Apple has also launched this service this year. Merchants should connect their management systems to this payment method. Otherwise, it may lose customers for your brand.
How can consumers find the best deals and save money during Black Friday and Cyber Monday?
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Consumers must plan their shopping lists in advance for this grand shopping holiday. Find much-needed products to help you avoid impulse buying that blows your budget.
Look for deals at some coupon sites, such as SlickDeals, Groupon and CouponBirds. You can enter your favorite brands into the search bar, and you can find deals and codes that suit you, which is very convenient and fast.
Some daily necessities are often purchased at low-cost merchants such as Amazon, Target, Overstock, and Walmart, which gather multiple retailers and offer great discounts.
Email subscription. Many online shopping brands generally have an email subscription channel. If you submit your email address, you will often receive the latest discount code in your email, including the code used for the first purchase, and a special discount code for birthdays. There are also special offers during festivals.
Pay attention to the return policy. Some brands’ daily return policy may not apply to orders during large promotions such as Black Friday or Cyber Monday. Therefore, before placing an order, be sure to understand the return policy of the brand you bought to avoid costs caused by wrong decisions.
Source: pinterest.com
The pandemic has affected every aspect of life, including retail. This has led to rapid growth in e-commerce as more and more people shop safely at home. With the addition of smartphones and social media, online shopping has become inseparable from people’s lives. The Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping festivals in 2024 are expected to usher in a lot of growth, which will be a big boost for both merchants and consumers.
Black Friday was originally an offline event, and now it is gradually developing into an online festival, which combines offline and online stores and customers. Cyber Monday is mainly a promotional event for online stores since it appeared. Many merchants will launch relevant discounts in advance, rather than publish all the deals on the same day. Although the peak of Black Friday sales is around the 25th, popular items are likely to be sold out before Black Friday. However, there are some merchants whose activities focus on Cyber Monday. For those who didn’t get their favorite items on Black Friday, please don’t feel so upset and remember to see if there are any good things at a low price on Cyber Monday also.
