What did superheroes and ecommerce/mobile had in common this past 2013 Holiday Shopping Season?

They both saved the world, or in this case, the retailing season. Just see 2013 holiday shopping season retailers performance by the numbers.

Stakes were high

And competition was fierce because holiday shopping season generates 30% of sales and 40% of profits for many stores. To maximize revenue opportunities, key retailers like Amazon and Walmart even kicked-off pre-Black Friday sales well in advance, as early as November 4^th.

The landscape

Expectations were moderate to high this year, the shortest holiday season in years, with 6 fewer days shopping days between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Specifically,

• November retail sales were expected to grow 0.6%, while November/December sales were expected to get a 3.9% boost (Source: National Retail Federation) and reach $602 billion
• Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales were projected to grow 2.2% (Source: IbisWorld)
• Ecommerce sales were anticipated to rise 16% and surpass $55 billion (Source: ComScore) or 15.1% and reach $61.8 billion (Source: eMarketer). Volusion even predicted that global ecommerce sales for SMBs would grow about 20%, surpassing growth for giant retailers

US results are in

Online sales outpaced growth at brick and mortar stores by a landslide, primarily fueled by mobile shoppers, the big winners this 2013 shopping season. As a whole, retailers saw a modest 0.7% gain in November, nevertheless the best gain in 5 months (Source: US Census Bureau), and a 2.7% rise in holiday season sales (Source: ShopperTrak).

At the same time:

• Online sales rose 17.3% on Thanksgiving & Black Friday (Source: ComStore) or 20% on Thanksgiving and 19% on Black Friday (Source: IBM).

• Sales on Black Friday fell 13.2% from last year, with foot traffic down 11.4% (Source: ShopperTrak). The reason? Consumers responded to Thanksgiving Day store openings, plus the continued rise of ecommerce kept shoppers away from the stores --tablets and smartphones made it much easier to shop online while enjoying traditional family time at home.

• Thanksgiving became a billion-dollar online shopping day for the first time, $1.06 billion (Source: Adobe Systems) as more consumers used tablets to browse for deals, and companies ramped up coupons and discounts. A record 21% of all online Thanksgiving shopping came via mobile devices, and smartphones drove most of the Web browsing (Source: IBM). In a nutshell,
  • $152M were spent via tablets
  • $70M were spent via smartphones

• Thanksgiving revenue for leading online retailers rose nearly 40% from last year (Source: Monetate), including:
  • 73.6% rise in revenue from shoppers using tablets
  • 50.7% rise in sales for smartphone users
  • 39.8% increase in revenues via laptop and desktop computers

• November-December online spending jumped 10% to $46.5 billion (Source: ComScore), and the unprecedented volume of shipped packages in December brought US delivery networks to a halt. In fact, complains skyrocketed as UPS and FedEx scrambled to deliver delayed Christmas packages. The reason? Bad weather, more present-buying done online this year, more consumers shopped last-minute deals and more retailers offered free shipping this season

• The number of visits and foot traffic to brick and mortar stores fell 7% the weekend before Christmas (Source: RetailNext) and overall 14.6% for the entire season (Source: ShopperTrak)

• Amazon attained record sales, selling 426 items per second during its best ever holiday shopping season. Similarly, Apple reported record-smashing 3 billion downloads and $1 billion in sales for App Store in December alone.

Yet not everything was rosy for online retailers. Despite thriving ecommerce success this season, several retailers experienced severe Websites outages and glitches that impacted sales, brand and revenue. For example, Australian?s major retailer Myer Website was down for several days after crashing on Xmas, CVS mobile Website was frustratingly slow for many users, Belk Website experienced slowdowns & outages on Thanksgiving and Black Friday due to heavy traffic, Delta Website glitch allowed users to book flights at 1/10th of the price, and Beyonc? new album crashed iTunes as millions of fans rushed to download. Even Walmart Website, the world's largest retailer, was down on Cyber Tuesday.

Key takeaway for IT professionals

Now more than ever, revenue and corporate success hinges on your ability to ensure quality Web experiences at all times, across desktop/tablets/smartphone devices, regardless of the number of online visitors and traffic fluctuations. Therefore, proactive Web performance monitoring to find and resolve problems before large volumes of users are impacted is a must this year -- regardless of company size and sector. Check out our Website fiascos and lessons learned blog series for additional information and tips on how to prevent costly Website outages and glitches.

And remember, Site24x7, our cloud-based Web performance monitoring service lets you track the availability and response time of your websites and applications from 50+ monitoring locations across the globe.

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