Cyber Monday: What worked and what didn’t

Cyber Monday sales set a new record, hitting $3 billion for the first time.

That marked the biggest online shopping day in history, and it was up 16.2 percent over last year, according to the Custora E-Commerce Pulse, which tracks web shopping trends.

The big sales were no surprise, of course.

Online shopping has become mainstream, and just about every retailer offers some sort of Cyber Monday incentive to draw shoppers in, from free shipping to deep discounts.

What was perhaps most interesting about Cyber Monday was the distinct shopping patterns that are starting to develop, which media people can use to their advantage when planning and buying for clients.

Some things resonate with shoppers, while others do not. Here’s a look at what was hot and what wasn’t on Cyber Monday.

HOT

Mobile shopping

Twenty-seven percent of Cyber Monday sales came on smartphones or tablets, Custora reports, up from 23 percent last year. People are still most likely to buy using Apple devices, such as iPhones and iPads, which accounted for 75.6 percent of all sales.

Buyers say clients were more interested in mobile ads this year because of this shift.

Email advertising

Though texting and instant messaging have replaced email as the e-communication methods of choice, email is still preferred for advertising. It drove 22 percent of all transactions on Cyber Monday, more than any other form of marketing.

Search and paid search

Search, both paid and unpaid, also sparked a huge portion of orders: 20.7 percent and 16.6 percent, respectively, ranking behind only email.

NOT HOT

Social media

Yes, people may have jumped on social media to brag about tracking down a hard-to-find hoverboard or other popular holiday item. But they didn’t use Facebook, Twitter or the other sites to seek out deals. A mere 1.5 percent of sales were driven by social networks.

Big sales

Though many sites offered discounts and proclaimed Cyber Monday their “best day of deals,” analysts say retailers have been marking down prices all year, so Cyber Monday sales weren’t particularly notable.

And Custora says the average order value rose by 1.3 percent, indicating fewer promotion-driven sales.

PayPal

On the biggest e-shopping day of the year, the biggest pay site stumbled: PayPal was hit by so much traffic, it resulted in periodic outages. You’d expect this, perhaps, 10 years ago, when technology was still catching up to demand, but not in 2015.

Tags: cyber monday, cyber monday 2015, cyber monday sales, ecommerce, holiday shopping, online shopping, paypal