Black Friday 2010 Wrapup: Early Start, Mobile Growth, Win for eTailers

Black Friday season came harder and earlier this year at BlackFriday2010.com.  Retailers pushing “Early Black Friday” sales drove increased traffic and interest, furthering Black Friday’s shift from one day over Thanksgiving weekend to a month-long (Black November?) period of research, planning and strategizing with shopping friends.  We saw particular traffic growth from mobile, apps and social media.
Most importantly, how good was Black Friday 2010 subjectively from a consumer standpoint?  Pretty good as evidenced by our Top 15 Deals.  In general, the sales had breadth and depth and the continuing trend of price depreciation on commoditized electronics led to all-time lows on TVs ($198 for a 32? flat screen) and laptops (also $198 for a 15.6?).  As predicted, we saw “more people, same stuff, less money” with overall growth just a blip at 0.3%.  The early sales may have sapped some day-of interest though online sales on Friday grew by 16%.
BlackFriday2010.com data:
-There were 16.7M total views of leaked Black Friday Ads, 106% higher than last year
-Over 220,000 downloads of the Black Friday by BradsDeals iPhone App
-The most intense Black Friday research & planning was on Saturday 11/20 when visitor “time on site” peaked at 8.27 minutes.
-Mobile traffic grew to 7.1% of total BlackFriday2010.com traffic, up 42% from 5.0%.
-Social media traffic grew 141% year-over-year
-Target, Walmart and Bestbuy were the most popular Black Friday Ads
-TVs were the most popular category by far and represented 4 of the 5 most clicked on products within Black Friday Ads: 1) HP 15.6? Laptop for $298 at Walmart 2) Emerson 32? LCD TV for $198 at Walmart 3) 55? LED TV for $1499 at Bestbuy 4) Westinghouse 40? LCD TV for $298 at Target 5) Panasonic 50? Plasma for $699 at Bestbuy
Other Black Friday Data:
-Shoppertrak says total in-store sales rose only 0.3% to $10.69B.
-Coremetrics reports online sales on Black Friday rose 16% to $690M
-Online shoppers spent $190 dollars per order vs. $170 last year, says Coremetrics, but with items per order growing 37% from 5.4 to 7.4 this speaks to the depreciation mentioned above
Who does this bode well for?  Mainly online retailers like Amazon, Buy.com, Overstock.com and GSI Commerce, who runs ecommerce for brands like Toysrus, NFL, Adidas and Ralph Lauren. Also, the biggest bricks-and-mortar retailers with the most wholesale pricing power to avoid deep hits to margins (Walmart, Target, Bestbuy).
PS – photos courtesy of the 1st Annual Craziest Black Friday Photo Contest. Thanks to all of our Facebook Fans who submitted!
This entry was posted on Saturday, November 27th, 2010 at 7:18 pm and is filed under Data. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
View the original article here  Best Buy Black Friday Deals 2011