This is it! The week of Black Friday is finally here. Although we’ve been seeing early Black Friday deals and week-long promotions, the day itself still marks the official start of the holiday shopping season. As you prepare your Thanksgiving dinners and holiday promotions, see what NetElixir has in store for this week as shared in our holiday e-commerce calendar.
November 21 to 27, 2021 Online Sales Summary
Key: Green is moderate YoY growth (<5%); Orange is high YoY growth (5-12%); Red is very high YoY growth (>12%)
NetElixir projects November 21st to 27th to be a strong week for e-commerce sales. We expect to see an increase of at least 12% YoY for Sunday and Monday. Sales will taper down slightly throughout the middle of the week in anticipation of the Black Friday explosion.
While Black Friday will always be a hallmark of the holiday shopping season, it will no longer be contained to just one, doorbuster-filled day. Last year helped cement Black Friday as a season-long entity, with early Black Friday deals starting as early as October. The week-long Black Friday promotions are likely here for good, with both online and brick-and-mortar offerings. Each day leading up to Black Friday may feature its own specific product- or category-level deal. Store-wide deals are reduced, for now, in favor of limited-time daily deals intended to keep customers coming back.
2021 Black Friday Forecast
Last year, Black Friday saw an AOV of $174, within our dataset. Mobile contributed to just over 55% of sales during Black Friday 2020 (up 10% from 2019). This year, we expect mobile to continue to play an important role in how customers search and shop for deals. Use mobile-exclusive deals to drive impulse purchases.
After creative promotions kicked off an early start to the holiday shopping season, our marketing efforts culminate in Thanksgiving and Black Friday deals going live at the end of this week. Brands should get creative with their Black Friday and Cyber Monday-specific promotions, as well. While deep discounts are to be expected on Black Friday, other promotions can be just as valuable. As we saw in last week’s update, shoppers are willing to pay full price for products to have them now, rather than risk missing out on their top gift choice due to inventory shortages.
Black Friday deals don’t have to be limited to just one format. Consider leveraging other offers, such as a reduced free shipping minimum, launching new products, or exclusive giveaways with the purchase of a certain product. Different deals could help you stand out from the competition.
Further Insights
Holiday shopping has become a marathon, not a last-minute sprint. Over the course of your customers’ holiday shopping marathon, their wants, needs, expectations, and behavior will change. It is important to engage with your customers based on how they are acting in this moment. NetElixir is continually aggregating and analyzing our real-time e-commerce data using our customer analytics tool, LXRInsights, to stay updated with customers’ rapid changes in behavior. Remaining agile and nimble to seize any opportunity to engage shoppers is crucial to having a winning holiday season, especially during the highly competitive Black Friday season.
Register for our annual Cyber 5 Webinar: Results. Trends. Insights. During this webinar, we’ll break down the search-shop-buy behavior of your online customers throughout the crucial shopping days from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday. During this live webinar, our founder and CEO, Udayan Bose, will discuss:
- Day-by-day and hour-by-hour analysis of when your consumers searched and shopped throughout Cyber 5
- What the Cyber 5 trends mean for the rest of the holiday season
- How you can strengthen your marketing strategy for the rest of the holiday and post-holiday season
This webinar is part of our annual holiday offerings — which also includes our holiday e-commerce calendar — and 2021 marks our 13th annual holiday forecast.
