Ecommerce | Ecommerce News

The Real Cyber Monday

You’ve heard them all – Cyber Monday, eDay, dMonday, and xMonday was even thrown into the mix. But is there any truth to the hype, or were these days just coined by savvy online retailers and internet marketing companies? According to our calculations, there is some fact to the furor.

In case you’ve been hiding under a rock for the past year – or simply shopping at those, oh, what do you call them, brick-and-mortar stores – Cyber Monday is a clever name for the Monday following Thanksgiving when online retail sales are supposedly highest. The term was coined by Shop.org in 2005, claiming the increased online sales were due to individuals shopping from their high-speed internet connections at the office. Although this statistic turned out to be false (Cyber Monday ’05 was only the ninth highest online spending day), it was the highest retail traffic day, much to the dismay of bosses everywhere.

After learning that Shop.org’s calculations were off, people tried to predict the “real” Cyber Monday for 2006. Again, the conjectures were wrong, but they did succeed at creating equally hokey names. Some guessed that December 4th, not surprisingly named “eDay,” would prove to be the most lucrative for online retailers because consumers would “window shop” on Cyber Monday – check out deals and compare prices – then wait a week to make purchases. After eDay came and went, and retailers weren’t seeing the sales spikes they’d anticipated, another day was doubtlessly deemed “Delivery Deadline Monday” or “dMonday.” Retailers thought this Monday would have the highest sales because it was two weeks before Christmas, just enough time to get standard shipping rates on orders. For those procrastinators with fewer monetary qualms, a high-sale prediction was made for December 18th and termed “xMonday.”

It seems that if one cannot be bothered with visiting an actual brick-and-mortar store, said person also cannot be bothered with completing their holiday shopping early. Overall, SearchAdNetwork, a search engine marketing agency based out of Denver, found Monday, December 18th or xMonday to have the most spikes in average daily revenue. Individuals realized that they could still get their orders in time for the big day; they’d just have to pay a little more for shipping. The 18th also falls around the time that most people receive their Christmas bonuses, giving them a little bit of extra spending money. dMonday was the second highest average revenue day. These dawdling shoppers were just a bit more frugal than their xMonday shopping counterparts.

SearchAdNetwork’s Media Agent revealed an interesting trend this holiday shopping season – all Mondays and Tuesdays were high revenue days. In past years, it was hypothesized that shoppers were waiting until the weekend was over to take advantage of high-speed internet connections at the office. This explanation becomes null as more and more people subscribe to high-speed internet services at home. The real reason for this increase in online sales at the beginning of the week may be that individuals use computers at work so that family members cannot see what they are ordering or check the history. After discussing wish lists over the weekend, parents may try to outsmart sly kids by doing all online shopping from the office.

Highest ROAS percentage day was one statistic the Denver search engine marketing company found to be constant among all retail clients. It is not shocking that it fell on a familiar day of the week – Monday, December 11 or dMonday. What is rather surprising is that dMonday was not the highest Ad Spend day, nor was it in the top ten for most clients. Seeing as though dMonday was not the highest revenue day either, this finding is certainly curious. It seems that shoppers were more willing to take the extra effort on this day to search out items they wanted, instead of simply relying on the first advertisement displayed by search engines. Or the high ROAS may be explained away as the first wave of the “oh-no-must-buy-presents-now” thought process.

SearchAdNetwork’s reports show another interesting trend – December 26 was an uncharacteristically high revenue day for each retail clients. SAN has a number of theories for this post-Christmas sales spike; some based on actual data, some on knowledge of our client’s products and others based on experiences with giving and receiving presents. SAN believes that many people were online purchasing accessories and complimentary products for items they received as presents. There is strong proof for this conjecture based on the average order size on December 26 – although there were a greater number of orders, the average amount spent on each order was small. This means that individuals weren’t purchasing big-ticket items; instead, they were ordering all the fun and necessary parts for larger gifts. Another reason for this revenue spike could be that people did not receive what they wanted for Christmas and decided they must take matters into their own hands. Or they were simply using money they had received as a present to purchases items online.

One client that specializes in fitness equipment saw an exceptionally large sales spike on Christmas day. This increase could be due to individuals feeling self-conscious and out-of-shape after eating a giant holiday feast. Again, these sales could be due to people spending money they had received as a gift. Giving someone a treadmill for Christmas can seem insulting, even if they had asked for it; therefore, loved ones may have given money instead so the receiver could make their own fitness purchase.

According to comScore, the 2006 holiday season saw a 26 percent increase in e-commerce spending over 2005; yet, Cyber Monday proved less than electric for online retail sales. In 2006, SearchAdNetwork found that the “real” Cyber Monday – the one day of the winter holiday season with the highest online revenue – was December 18th. Coming in at a close second and also the day with the highest ROAS percentage was Monday, December 11th. This data suggests that due to the convenience of online shopping, customers wait until the absolute last minute to make their purchases even if it means spending more on shipping costs. SearchAdNetwork’s reports also show an increase in average revenue on all Mondays and Tuesdays.

This early-week trend reveals the purchasing patterns of shoppers along with the snooping tendencies of children, suggesting that parents wait until returning to work to quickly and secretly order gifts from internet retailers. The internet marketing firm also noted a spike in online revenue on December 26th when people were shopping for accessories and complimentary items to gifts received the day before. Overall, SearchAdNetwork saw a major increase in sales and ROAS for all clients. Without a doubt, there were plenty of reasons for online retailers and internet marketing businesses to celebrate the 2006 holiday season.