Ranksey Roundup #6: Shopify’s Record-High BFCM Sales

Back before online shopping was the next big thing, Black Friday was a much bigger event. It wasn’t just finding a good deal online and adding it to your cart – it was a stressful day where crowds would flood stores and people would get into physical fights over low–priced TVs.

Now it’s almost exclusively online shopping and your favorite brand might just be running their Black Friday promotions for the entire month of November. At the very least, they are running their sales for a week. Where did the excitement go?

As a consumer, I’m not even mad – shopping from the comfort of my own home is an ideal situation. But I do find it interesting how BFCM has changed over the years and especially post-pandemic. Either way, BFCM sales are up and it’s time to celebrate… right?

??? MARKETING NEWS, UPDATES, & TIPS

Shopify Stores Have Their Biggest BFCM Yet

Black Friday 2023 weekend was the biggest it’s ever been for Shopify merchants collectively, hitting $9.3 billion in sales. A total of 61 million consumers bought from a store powered by Shopify. That $9.3 billion is a 24% increase compared to 2022’s Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend.

Shopify stores weren’t the only ones who had their biggest Black Friday either – Amazon claims they also had record-high sales for Black Friday.

With stores seeing such a huge increase in sales for Black Friday when compared to any other year, the following reasons could be contributing to this:

• With inflation affecting families, consumers are looking for great deals and lower prices more than ever.
• Many consumers are sticking with online shopping. COVID forced a shift in demand for shopping online, and since it did, many shoppers now prefer to stay at home instead of going out in public.
• Consumers are going into debt for their holiday shopping.

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I love hearing that brands had a record year this year. I immediately assumed that consumers would be looking to take advantage of deals to get the most bang for their buck this holiday season and while I do believe this is the case, I think there is something bigger happening.

What’s concerning is that Buy Now, Pay Later sales were up 47% this year compared to last year. This is a clear sign that consumers are spending money that they don’t have. Is this a sign that there are worse days ahead for our economy or are consumers just making bad financial decisions?

Interesting Reads:

Black Friday shoppers spent a record $9.8 billion in U.S. online sales, up 7.5% from last year

Black Friday was a big day this year for US brands, with consumers spending even more than last year.

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Hot take: B2B is the biggest commerce opportunity of 2024

The CRO of Shopify shares his take on how B2B is starting to become a bigger opportunity for e-commerce than ever.

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Top E-commerce Trends for 2024: Prepare Your Business for Success

2024 is just a month away. Here are some trends in e-commerce that you should get ahead of.

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?? ?MARKETING KPI OF THE MONTH

The KPI of the month is New vs. Returning Customers. With acquisition costs on the rise, tracking New vs. Returning customers is more important than ever. If you’re using a platform such as Google Ads to drive sales to your business, knowing how much of that traffic is new customers is crucial to making the right optimizations.

Is most of that traffic branded searches that would have come to your website anyway? These are the kind of things to keep track of in order to make data-driven decisions when acquiring customers. In a perfect world, you should be shooting for an equal split between new vs returning customers.

Looking to optimize for New Customers? Check out these resources: ?

New vs. Returning Visitors: What’s the Difference and How to Interpret the Data?

Check out this guide to New vs. Returning customers.

New Customer Acquisition Goals in Google Ads Performance Max

If you’re focused on acquiring new customers for your e-commerce brand, using Performance Max the right way can drive the results you’re looking for.

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147 – MASTERING GOOGLE PERFORMANCE MAX ADVERTISING WITH SCOTT OSTERMILLER

That's a wrap on this month’s newsletter. How was BFCM for your brand? Did you hit a new record? Did you see a decline? Were you able to take advantage of increased demand to acquire a lot of new customers? I’d love to hear about it.