Research from HookLogic has highlighted a new UK shopping trend, which saw a peak in conversions at 1am on Black Friday, with traffic peaking just before – shoppers were clearly aiming to make the most of potential discounts as early as possible.
The research also found that, in contrast to Black Friday’s 1am and 8am peaks, Cyber Monday saw the most traffic at 8pm, with a peak in conversions appearing an hour later.
More shoppers flocked to major retail sites on both Black Friday and Cyber Monday than ever before, according to the research.
HookLogic sees over 43 billion ecommerce searches a year.
The latest data highlights a new trend for UK consumers, where Black Friday saw an early peak in traffic just after midnight at 3.9x the October baseline, with conversion to sales then peaking at 1am, representing an astounding 33x increase vs. the typical conversion at that time of day. Clearly consumers hopped online, checked out the various deals, and then quickly locked in purchases.
Conversion then reached its highest peak of the day at 9am, at 8.5x the baseline, and remained strong through the rest of the day. While both traffic and conversion rose steadily from early November, as shoppers completed significant pre-purchase research and took advantage of early discounts, traffic on Thursday evening actually surpassed that of Friday evening, by which point shoppers had completed much of their browsing and research.
Cyber Monday, while not seeing the spikes that Black Friday did, was nonetheless a good day for retailers with conversion levels higher than the days leading up to Black Friday. Different than Black Friday, however, Cyber Monday traffic peaked in the evening at 8pm, at a 4x increase vs. the baseline. Conversion followed an hour later, after consumers had completed their final research, at a 5.4x increase. Interesting to note, the weekend between Black Friday and Cyber Monday also saw higher than normal shopping activities.
“As Black Friday and Cyber Monday saw huge increases in popularity last year, we were keen to see how much UK shopping habits had changed around these shopping events this year. Judging by the sales increases we saw, it seems UK shoppers have really embraced these selling days,” commented Ben Cooper, General Manager Europe, HookLogic. “However, the increases don’t stop here. Given that weekend traffic and conversion stayed at levels more than double the baseline, we anticipate continued online success throughout the festive season.”