Channel Advisor has released some store sales e-commerce data for the second week of December along with a broader look at year-over-year holiday sales trends. Like last year, sales fell during this week of the holiday shopping season from the first week of December. Sales rose just 8 percent over the same week in 2013, down from 14.8 percent the previous week. What sets this year apart from last year’s growth trend is how much earlier the shopping growth peaked.
Merchants ramped up holiday sales offers earlier and consumers followed their lead. In fact, sales growth peaked in the third week of November this year compared to the first week of December in 2013.
Holiday e-commerce trends: Year-over-year growth rates show 2014 started strongly, but then quickly slowed. Source: Channel Advisor
All eyes now will be on whether what ChannelAdvisor CEO, Scot Wingo, calls the “procrastinator pop” will come through for retailers again this year. Did most people get their shopping taken care of before we even hit December this year, or will late shoppers generate a growth spike in the third week of December?
Amazon And Retailer Marketplaces Driving Growth
The week’s growth was again driven by so-called Other 3PMs — third-party merchants such as BestBuy, Sears that have added marketplaces — and Amazon, which grew by 19.2 percent and 15.3 percent respectively.
Google search was up 7.5 percent for the week and overall growth is at 8.7 percent this season. EBay’s growth slumped to just 1.9 percent for the week, though it is up 9.7 percent so far this holiday.
Mobile Usage Continues To Hold
Device trends held steady, with mobile devices (tablets and smartphones) accounting for 42 percent of traffic and PCs driving 58 percent of shopping traffic. Smartphones continued to lead tablets, driving 24 percent of traffic compared to 18 percent for tablets.
PCs accounted for 73 percent of orders in week two of December, tablets drove 12 percent and smartphones drove 15 percent of orders.
Conversion rates have fallen across the board from the highs of the Cyber Five days between November 28 and December 2nd. PC conversion rates fell from 5.79 percent to 4.62 percent. Tablets are off from 3.88 percent to 3.17 percent conversion rates, and smartphones trail falling from 2.18 percent to 1.78 percent.
ChannelAdvisor’s next report will come out on December 22nd.
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