Mobile commerce made global Cyber Weekend 'breakthrough' - report

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Dec 1, 2022

In the excitement about the fact that Black Friday weekend didn’t turn out to be ‘Bleak Friday’ as some had predicted, it's easy to overlook exactly how consumers shopped, rather than just how much they spent. But a new report says that the four-day period was all about the strength of mobile commerce.

Nosto’s Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) analysis indicates that 2022 saw a “breakthrough” in m-commerce for shoppers with nearly-two thirds of sales (63%) now on mobile devices, up 10% from 2021. “Consumers are now not just using smartphones to research but are actively purchasing through them,” it said.

And they're clearly doing that in big numbers, as the combination of better phone technology, larger screen sizes and retailers making their mobile sites and apps as user-friendly as possible, all help the growth of m-tail.

The analysis is based on over 107 million visits across 1,269 e-stores over the BFCM 2022 weekend in Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia Pacific, Middle East, and Africa. 

Nosto said that overall conversion was down a few percent, but that’s perhaps unsurprising given the shift to mobile. Some 73% of traffic, 63% of sales volumes, and 68% of orders were taken on mobile. However, shoppers are still more likely to convert on desktop than mobile (4.5% v 3.6%) and spend more, with a desktop order value of $126 versus $100 on mobile. 

That issue aside, Nosto also said that average order values (AOV) in the fashion sector increased by 9.8% from 2021, with sales growing by 8.2% and traffic by 9.3%.

Shoppers retained their keen eye for a bargain and on average, consumers bought products at a 40% discount, with 20% the minimum accepted discount level for most shoppers. Some 83% of all online sales during BFCM involved discounts.

The report added that strongest vertical over BFCM was health & beauty which saw large year-on-year increases in traffic (13.5%), and sales (22.6%), while AOV was up 1.2%. Fashion saw the biggest increase in AOV at almost 10%, as mentioned above, “demonstrating that people are still buying clothing, despite current economic conditions”.

In terms of sales volumes, Black Friday itself “still reigns supreme”. It saw year-on-year increases in traffic (6.3%) ,sales (8.4%), and AOV (4.9%), and made up 33% of total sales over the four-day period. Meanwhile, Cyber Monday saw the biggest increases in traffic and sales, but it still doesn't manage to top Black Friday in terms of overall sales volumes. However, traffic increased by 7.5%, sales by 11.7%, and AOV by 7.6% on that day.