Mondays Were Peak Holiday Shopping Traffic Days, Says Data Monitoring Firm

Mondays were peak traffic days during the holiday shopping season, digital performance monitoring company Soasta reported. From the week before Thanksgiving through the beginning of January, Mondays were consistently the top traffic days, “outside of Thanksgiving weekend,” it said. The company attributed the behavior to buyers doing some or all of their holiday shopping at work away from the eyes of family members. Black Friday had more holiday traffic than Cyber Monday, Soasta said, calling the trend a “huge shift.” Cyber Monday still saw a “significant” spike in traffic, but it was overshadowed by Black Friday, which accounted for 25 percent of all Thanksgiving weekend traffic, Soasta said. It cited possible factors: consumers turning to online shopping to avoid crowded stores; shoppers becoming increasingly savvy about in-store deals not being “as good as they’re made out to be”; growth of shopping on mobile devices; and “the Amazon effect” on consumer behavior. Almost half of consumers surveyed said they used Amazon for holiday shopping and 43 percent bought at least half of their gifts from Amazon, it said. Soasta encouraged retailers to prepare for continued transition from stores to online shopping, citing Macy’s announcement it’s closing 68 stores as “writing on the wall.” It said retailers need to plan for more traffic than they expect to avoid site crashes due to traffic surges from successful promotions. The mobile shopping experience has to improve, Soasta said, citing “abysmal performance” on mobile device conversions. The sweet spot for peak conversions is 2.4 seconds across all devices, it said.