Emarketing | Direct Marketing Observations

So, perhaps Cyber Monday is more myth than Black Friday is reality. Is Cyber Monday really this rockem-sockem day where we all come in and the first thing we want to do on monday morning is hit the “sales” offered online? I say that because I just don’t think it’s nearly as big for online retailers as Black Friday is for traditional retailers in the malls.

The stats bear this out. Though the numbers have improved from year to year, this would make sense since the possibility of a computer in the home has risen to a level that rivals the washer and dryer. It’s not the first big spike in traffic or sales for the holiday season, nor the last. It’s actually not even close to the biggest of the year. Here’s the proof in the pudding. ComScore Networks showed only a slight 9% increase in sales yesterday from the previous Tuesday, which was in actuality, the real start of the holiday retail season. Why you ask? Merely because sales had spiked 55%. Thats right, 55%.

Likewise, Nielsen//NetRatings said Cyber Monday traffic from people shopping at work rose 18% from the week before. But that’s far below the 39% week-over-week spike on Black Friday from home shoppers. In fact, it’s even below the 25% at-work jump in traffic on the Saturday following Black friday. And you thought most people didn’t work on the weekends? night.

As we stated earler, the Cyber Monday numbers each sucessive year should grow as access to pc’s grows. Thus this year, Cyber Monday once again saw the highest unique audience of any day so far this holiday season with 29.5 million unique visits to Nielsen//NetRatings Holiday eShopping Index, according to the metrics firm.

Sixteen million of those visits came from the workplace, Neilsen//NetRatings said. That’s up 7 percent over last year. Of that, eBay, Amazon and Wal-Mart again took the top three spots, drawing 5.6 million, 4.2 million and 2.5 million unique visitors, respectively. The top shopping search engine was Shopzilla.com with 959,000 unique visitors. Customer spending on Cyber Monday totaled $608 million, up 26 percent versus the same day last year, according to ComScore. That number is not etched in stone since it does not take into context all e-tailers.

So the point is, though Cyber Monday has a cool moniker the fact of the matter is that it merely is just one of the more busy online shopping days of the year. In the grand scheme of things it’s merely another active day of online shopping.

Come November 26th, offices across the US will struggle to get their work done. Why?Because their employees will be shopping online for deals. If you are an internet retailer then you better have your shopping carts polished and ready to rock. If you are a large e-tailer than you better have enough bandwidth to endure the crush. And if you are a Wii dealer, forget it you’re screwed.

A recent survey revealed that 46 percent of working Americans expect to shop for bargains online the Monday following Thanksgiving, while they are at work. The study, conducted by Decision Analyst , stated that although more than 11 percent said they had been caught shopping by their boss while on the job, the survey showed that the temptation to find a great bargain is so strong, they would spend nearly an hour on average shopping online this Monday instead of working coupled with the risk of being caught again.

Cyber Monday was coined to identify the online activity that happens on the Monday immediately following Black Friday, which is traditionally one of the busiest shopping days of the year for “brick and mortar” stores. Cyber Monday is considered the ceremonial kick-off of the holiday online shopping season. Like Black Friday, many e-retailers offer some of the most exceptional deals of the year on Cyber Monday.

Shopping online during the holidays is a trend that has grown beyond a novel thing to do. It is now an accepted and expected form of Christmas Shopping. With that, comes the expectation that all e-tailers deliver on their end of the deal. Online Christmas shopping
allows shoppers to take advantage of broadband speeds within their offces, veritable privacy, as well as the ability to possibly surf the web for deals for extended periods of time. It also provides a way to save on purchases that would normally cost more in the brick and mortar world as well as a way to avoid crowds, traffic and long lines.

In the words of of Mr. Michael Buffer,”Are you readdddddy to rumble?”