July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

In the battle between made-up consumer holidays, it looks like Black Friday still reigns supreme on mobile devices.

When it comes to increases in usage, mobile apps from Amazon, Newegg, and Gilt all saw significantly higher gains on Black Friday compared to Cyber Monday, according to data compiled by the mobile data compression company Onavo.

The findings throw some water on the hype from eBay and Paypal, which were trying to make the term “Mobile Monday” replace Cyber Monday given the performance on their apps. Onavo’s data, which is compiled anonymously from more than 100,000 US iPhone owners running the company’s compression app, shows that eBay’s mobile app did see a rise on Cyber Monday — but for other popular shopping apps, that was far from the case.

For example, Amazon saw a 222 percent increase in app usage on Black Friday, compared to a 171 percent bump on Cyber Monday. And Gilt saw a massive increase of 185 percent last Friday, compared to 87 percent on Monday.

No matter what you think of annoying shopping holidays, it’s hard to deny the increasing importance of mobile shopping for online retailers.

Facebook was either an amazing driver of purchases and traffic over the holiday shopping weekend or a complete non-factor. So which is it?

The truth is likely somewhere in the middle, despite data sets that point us toward completely opposite ends of the spectrum.

On one end, we have analysis from third-party, holiday-weekend trackers such as IBM and Adobe, each of which looked at data sets from their clients. The lazy headline from their findings would be this: Facebook, and Twitter in particular, had little to no impact on direct traffic or online sales.

But Facebook’s own findings indicate it drove a substantial amount of referral traffic to retailers’ websites yesterday.

And then there’s Fab, a Facebook partner with the brightest outlook of all. The startup claims that a massive chunk, or about one-fourth, of its holiday weekend sales can be traced back to social sites.

So who should we believe? Everyone. I’ll tell you why, but first let’s go over the data sets.

The data

In IBM’s Digital Analytics Benchmark report, the company shared a few findings about the correlation, or lack there of, between social networks and Cyber Monday online sales:

• Out of all online sales, .41 percent can be attributed to referrals from social sites. Read as: less than half of a percent of Cyber Monday online sales for the day can be tracked back to people who directly clicked over from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or YouTube.
• Out of all online sessions, .8 percent can be attributed to social referrals. Read as: less than a percent of total Cyber Monday online sessions were from people who clicked through from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or YouTube.
• Facebook was responsible for referring .69 percent of all online sessions on Cyber Monday. Twitter was responsible for zero percent. Yes, I said zero.
• Cyber Monday online sales from people who clicked through from social networks were down 26 percent from 2011.

Source: IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark

Social sales and referrals

Adobe’s Digital Index came up with some similarly bleak-looking numbers around social and shopping on Cyber Monday. Keep in mind that the Adobe analytics team pegged online sales at $1.98 billion for the day, which is up 17 percent year-over-year.

• Social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest drove 2 percent of total visits on Cyber Monday.
• Social referrals were up 100 percent year-over-year.
• 77 percent of social referrals were from Facebook and Twitter combined, though Twitter was largely inconsequential.
• 15 percent of social referrals originated from Pinterest.

Source: Adobe Digital Index

Table: Social Refer­ral Share on Cyber Monday

Facebook, meanwhile, said that the top Internet retailers using the social network noticed an aggregate 240 percent increase in referral traffic on Cyber Monday compared to average referral traffic from the last several Mondays. Harry & David saw the highest jump in referral traffic. The basket-maker noticed an 11,425 percent uptick in referral traffic on Cyber Monday over the previous Mondays.

I requested the raw numbers associated with these leaps in referral traffic, but the company said it was unable to provide the data because it belongs to the advertisers.

Facebook did tell me, however, that the sites receiving the most referral traffic from the social network on Cyber Monday showed an average increase of 18 percent versus Cyber Monday 2011 referral traffic.

E-commerce site Fab was also more than happy to provide evidence that Facebook helped it bring in record-breaking sales on over the shopping weekend, even though said data was lacking actual revenue figures. Boo. Here’s what the startup shared:

• About 25 percent of sales over the long weekend can be linked back to social sources.
• Roughly 20 percent of Fab’s revenue from Friday through Monday came from users who originally joined the site via Facebook. Consider this indirect socially generated revenue.
• 65 percent of social traffic between Friday and Monday came from Facebook, 20 percent came from Pinterest, and 5 percent came from Twitter.

What it means

How doe you reconcile these disparate data sets? Honestly, you don’t, except to conclude that the story of how Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest contributed to Cyber Monday is complex.

“You can do anything with numbers,” Altimeter Group digital advertising and media analyst Rebecca Lieb told me. She believes that Fab’s data is likely the most telling of what actually happened on Cyber Monday, though she cautioned me and everyone else to wait until all the ballots have been counted, so to speak. “All the data aren’t in yet.”

Also consider that the data sets are looking at multiple types of behaviors. IBM and Adobe go for the direct approach, attempting to tie sales and traffic to click-throughs. Facebook, meanwhile, skips the conversion and return-on-investment metrics to show its ability to exponentially increase a retailer’s visibility.

“In all probability, Facebook did contribute to sales. I’m very sure they generated an enormous amount of traffic to retailers,” Lieb concluded.

Fab chose to look at the holiday weekend sales from people who, at any previous juncture, joined the service through Facebook, which means they sliced and diced revenue figures in terms of who was buying and not where people came from at the exact time of sale.

Even Adobe admits that its numbers don’t capture the complete story of what happened on social networks to drive or influence sales and traffic.

“Our data is based on last click, but we also know that social plays a much bigger role at the beginning of a conversation,” Tamara Gaffney, senior marketing manager at Adobe, told me.

“We really took a look at year-over-year growth in general, and we saw that the 2 percent of traffic was up 100 percent over last year. So, even though these are small numbers, they did grow dramatically since last year. We have another report that we’ve done that shows that one of the first places that people go when they turn on their computer is to their social network. Then, they do a few other things. Then, they do their shopping.”

Adobe, said Gaffney, is also working to better unravel the social-to-purchase flow for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

If there was any one major discrepancy to note, it would be that Adobe found social referrals to retailers on Cyber Monday were up 100 percent year-over-year, while IBM said sales from social referrals were down 26 percent year-over-year. Either social is getting better or worse at driving people to online retailers, not both.

Gaffney said the disparity has to do with the companies measuring different customers and that Adobe’s data pool was more representative than IBM’s. Adobe looked at more than 800 million visits on Monday and considered more than 50 percent of the Internet Retailer 500 list.

Oh, and by the way, I did ask Gaffney why Adobe lumped Facebook and Twitter into the same bucket, together representing 77 percent of all social referrals. It turns out that Twitter referrals were statistically insignificant and Facebook made up the bulk of that 77 percent. That means IBM and Adobe did agree on at least one thing: Twitter was irrelevant in generating click-throughs.

Still, the one absolute truth here is that the real story of social’s influence on holiday sales is unfinished business.

“We’re digging in to see if we can tell a broader story about social by looking at how many ‘likes,’ how many clicks, how many shares there are on Facebook during the holiday-Cyber Monday time period. This is another way that really shows the impact of social much earlier in the conversation,” Gaffney said.

Or as Lieb put it, “The way you model attribution is everything.”

Photo credit: Яick Harris/Flickr

But there’s a dirty little secret that mobile commerce has been keeping. It’s slow — deadly slow.

Site monitoring and testing company Keynote tracks the speed and reliability of top U.S. e-commerce sites, and over the weekend things slowed down dramatically. Especially today, on Cyber Monday.

“The average page load time for a mobile retail site … on Cyber Monday is now slower than 18 seconds, or roughly twice as slow as normal,” Aaron Rudger, a mobile manager at Keynote, said in a statement.

Source: Keynote

Fastest mobile sites

That’s almost nine times slower than the average time on top e-commerce companies’ desktop sites: 2.27 seconds. And it’s an eternity while you’re standing there staring at your tiny screen. It’s something I’ve noticed personally even when it’s not Black Friday or Cyber Monday, and even when using fast LTE networks with an iPhone 5 or a Google/Samsung Nexus.

But there’s mobile, and there’s mobile.

Of that 16.3 percent of Black Friday commerce that came in over mobile, the lion’s share — 10 of those 16 percentage points — were purchases made on iPads. Only about a quarter of iPads are sold with cellular connectivity — most are Wi-Fi models. And only a very small fraction, about six percent, of iPad browsing sessions come over cellular networks.

All of which means that iPad numbers are very different from what we typically imagine when we think of “mobile commerce.” iPad-facilitated traffic and sales data gets lumped in with smartphones under the big tent of “mobile,” but the tablet experience of a large screen, beefy processor, and fast local Wi-Fi is very different from a tiny screen, over sometimes-jammed cellular networks, and a generally slower processor.

What that means is: mobile shopping on a phone isn’t exactly the best — or speediest — experience.

“This is quite detrimental and will certainly impact a customer’s experience negatively and can easily motivate a shopper to abandon a site altogether or go to a competitor’s mobile shopping site,” Rudger said.

The solution, according to Keynote, is better sites and better testing, especially testing under load.

Source: Keynote

Slowest mobile sites

photo credit: Michael W. May via photopin cc

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Amazon’s line of Kindle readers are undoubtedly popular among consumers this holiday season, but it’s difficult to determine exactly how many have sold.

Today the company released new information about Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales data that vaguely indicate that Kindles are selling well — without actually stating any hard sales numbers.

For instance, Amazon stated that Cyber Monday was “the biggest day ever for Kindle sales worldwide” and “Kindle Fire HD is the most gifted and most wished for product on Amazon worldwide since launch.” (See the full list of “milestones” below.)

It’s really hard to tell whether Amazon is actually breaking sales records with its refreshed line of Kindles, or if the company is once again playing cheerleader for its own products as a way to avoid disclosing possibly lackluster results. Unlike last year, Amazon doesn’t have the benefit of selling its Kindle devices inside two of the largest physical retailers, Walmart and Target.

Amazon was a little more forthcoming with sales data last holiday season, and released enough data that suggested it sold about 5 million Kindle Fires. Yet overall, Amazon has been notoriously vague about its Kindle sales.

It’ll be interesting to see how shareholders will react if Amazon once again decides to stay silent about Kindle sales (broken down by tablets and e-readers), digital sales, and digital sales through Kindle devices.

Amazon’s Kindle “milestones”:

• Cyber Monday 2012 was the biggest day ever for Kindle sales worldwide.
• The top 4 spots on the worldwide Amazon best sellers list since launch nearly three months ago are Kindle e-readers and Kindle Fires.
• To celebrate Cyber Monday, Amazon.com offered a special deal—just $129 for the Kindle Fire. Customers flocked to the deal, making this the biggest Cyber Monday deal ever for Amazon.com.
• Kindle Fire HD is the most gifted and most wished for product on Amazon worldwide since launch.
• 9 out of the top 10 best-selling products on Amazon worldwide since 9/6 are Kindles, Kindle accessories and digital content.

Photo by Jennifer Van Grove/VentureBeat

That’s a new record, the NRF said, and 28 percent of those weekend shoppers were at stores by midnight on Black Friday.

The numbers are up from last year’s figures (226 million people spending $398 each last year), and includes 89 million shoppers on Black Friday alone. They also may blow earlier predictions of $32 billion in sales on Black Friday and Cyber Monday out of the water, although Monday sales, of course, are not yet included in these figures.

Close to half the amount spent — 40.7 percent, or $170.42 — was spent online. That’s also up from 37.8 percent last year. Half of all Black Friday shoppers did at least some shopping online.

“There’s no question that millions of people were drawn to retailers’ aggressive online promotions this weekend, making sure to research and compare prices days in advance to ensure they were getting the best deal they could,” said Pam Goodfellow, BigInsight’s consumer insights director. BigInsight conducted the poll of 4005 consumers, on which the numbers are based, for the NRF.

It may indeed be better to give than to receive, but not everyone was shopping for Christmas gifts.

In fact, 80 percent of shoppers bought non-gift items, with 60 percent buying clothes and accessories. Popular gifts included toys, media, electronics, and jewelry.

Unfortunately, when there are great deals and lots of people, some have trouble keeping it classy:

photo credit: Michael Holden via photopin cc

There once was a time when the biggest shopping scams were overpriced department stores and fake purses. But now shoppers should be on alert for Cyber Monday, which creates a whole new arena for ripping you off.

“All signs point to 2012 being the biggest year yet for scammers,” said Mark Risher, the chief executive of business security provider Impermium, in an email to VentureBeat. “In the week leading up to Cyber Monday, we’ve already seen a five-time increase in the amount of shopping-related spam across social networks.”

Cyber Monday is a term the National Retail Federation created in 2005 to call attention to all the online shopping you’ll probably be doing on the Monday after Thanksgiving, when you’re back at work and failing to be productive. Over time, it’s turned into a semi-big deal, with lots of discounts, coupons, and other bargains.

Cyber criminals go where the money is and where the easiest targets are, and Cyber Monday brings both of these together. People are on the hunt for good deals, and they are prepared to spend their dollars. It’s an ideal opportunity for a criminal to slip in and get you to click on a fake deal — the Internet equivalent to “Psst, hey, there are some Louis Vuitton bags down that alleyway.”

Indeed, social media is going to be hit hard with fake deals and likely even viruses that spread messages heralding savings. Criminals like to target social media because you inherently trust posts from your friends. If they can post a status to your friend’s Facebook wall on your behalf, he’s likely to believe it’s you that posted the status update, and click the link.

Pinterest users should also watch out. We saw a rash of Pinterest scams in March in which clicking a picture on its network leads to a spammy website. Since then, Pinterest is doing better at blocking these websites. It also tells you if you are being redirected to a different site when you click on a pin. Still, click with care.

Shoppers should be wary of public Wi-Fi hotspots. With smartphones today, a lot of people shop in malls, doing comparison shopping. According to a study by security company McAfee, 73 percent of Americans feel comfortable using public Wi-Fi, and 54 percent of Americans plan on using their phones to shop this holiday season. But you never know who is snooping the traffic on that hotspot that advertises itself as “free public Wi-Fi,” collecting all the data you’re transmitting.

Be sure to only make payments over a secure Internet connection to avoid getting your information — and maybe even identity — stolen.

According to Risher, the concerns about mobile shopping don’t end there.

“Mobile devices present an extra problem, because the small screens make it difficult for users to see where a link is leading” unlike on a desktop browser, where users can hover over the link to see its true destination, Risher said. “In these circumstances, users should be extremely cautious about entering their username or password on any pages they reach through a click. When in doubt, always browse to the site directly or use a bookmark to ensure against phishing and fraud.”

Bitdefender, a Romanian anti-virus company, says shoppers should look out for any offers of a “Platinum Card for Cyber Monday” advertisements. These are fake and infect the computer with malware when clicked.

If you do fall for one of these scams, Risher says to pay close attention to your credit card statements for any unusual activity.

“In addition, customers should ensure their anti-virus software is up-to-date and running regularly, as many shady sites can also harbor viruses and malware,” Bitdefender advises.

Hacker image via Shutterstock

The National Retail Federation’s latest poll says 147 million shoppers is a slight decrease from the 152 million who shopped last year’s Black Friday, possibly due to this being the earliest Thanksgiving since 2007. But per-shopper spending looks to jump 25 percent, according to a Consumer Electronics Association poll, to $218.

“The 2012 Thanksgiving weekend has the potential to be the biggest shopping weekend on record [in the U.S.],” the CEA’s chief economist, Shawn DuBravac, said in a statement.

Sixty percent of U.S. adults — about 140 million Americans — plan to buy at least one Christmas gift this weekend, according to the Consumer Electronics Association. That one gift — plus whatever goodies we buy ourselves — will add up fast.

Multiply the 147 million American shoppers that NRF predicts may hit stores this weekend with the average per-shopper spend CEA is estimating, and you’ve got almost $32 billion in gifts and assorted goodies flying off both real and virtual shelves this weekend — $32,046,000,000, to be exact.

That would be a major increase from last year, which saw about $11.4 billion in Black Friday sales and $1.25 billion in Cyber Monday revenues. But it does cover the entire weekend: Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, and combines both offline and online sales.

According to new Nielsen poll, a lot of those gifts will be electronics, as kids are hoping for iPhones, iPads, and Nintendo Wii Us under the tree. The same is true of gifts Americans present to themselves, and adults’ wish lists are full of tablets, smartphones, and laptops.

According to the CEA a third of Americans will visit a bricks-and-mortar store, while another 20 percent will prefer to let their fingers do the walking, online.

But not all is sweetness and light.

As the U.S. government deals with an impending “fiscal cliff,” half of consumers surveyed by the CEA say they’re worried and that it will affect their spending — perhaps in anticipation of taxation increases in the new year. Eighteen percent said the fiscal cliff will have a “large impact” on their spending.

But perhaps not very large, if we’ll be spending $32 billion in four days this weekend.

photo credit: Michael Holden via photopin cc

Between Black Friday and Cyber Monday falls … Small Business Saturday.

Yes, that’s actually a thing now: Created (and trademarked) by American Express in 2011, “Small Business Saturday” is an attempt to encourage people to do their holiday shopping at small businesses. It’s set for the Saturday after Thanksgiving. So after you go on a mall-shopping binge on Friday (or perhaps after you stay home knitting in observation of Buy Nothing Day), head downtown on Saturday and buy some stuff from local merchants.

And to help out, Twitter is offering $1 million in free ads for small businesses. The first 10,000 eligible businesses in the U.S. will get $100 in free advertising credits each, which they can use for promoting tweets or for promoting their own Twitter accounts. Nice, huh? You don’t even have to claim the credits this weekend — Twitter will keep the offer open until December 14. Click over here to apply for the program.

It’s a sweet gesture from Twitter to the vast engine of economic growth that is made up of America’s small businesses. But it’s also a canny promotional ploy for Twitter to call attention to its own advertising services, isn’t it?

But, let’s not be too jaded about this. After all, we’re talking about an imaginary holiday invented by a credit card company, but at least it’s one that might benefit some actual mom-and-pop shops.

Now, who wants to start a campaign for Startup Sunday?

Photo credit: American Express/Small Business Saturday

The good news for online retailers is that a third of shoppers plan to spend more, according to FatWallet’s consumer survey of 600 consumers across the U.S, while 54 percent are planning to spend the same amount. And most shoppers — 62 percent —  believe they’re going to get the best deals of the holiday season at the beginning of next week.

(One caveat on those numbers: they’re based on a subset of consumers who plan to shop on Cyber Monday, so they likely de-emphasize those with skinnier wallets to begin with. On the other hand, of those who plan to shop online this Cyber Monday, only three-quarters said they did the same last year.)

50% of people are looking for toy deals on Cyber Monday

But it’s a bit surprising to see what people are looking to buy on Cyber Monday. It’s not technology, at least primarily. Here’s what people will be shopping for next week:

• 70%: clothing deals
• 50%: toy deals
• 34%: appliance deals
• 32%: tablet deals
• 32%: laptop deals
• 26%: HDTV deals
• 23%: smartphone deals
• 26%: other deals

Clothing, toys, and appliances. Ignoring the fact that the main point of Cyber Monday is online shopping, there’s not a lot of technology showing up … especially the traditional technology purchases such as computers, smartphones, TVs, and home stereo systems.

Which I guess is the good news for online retailers: online shopping is now truly widespread.

photo credit: Kevin Marks via photopin cc, spieri_sf via photopin cc

This story was contributed by Bob Bunge, cyber security expert and associate professor in the College of Engineering and Information Sciences at DeVry University.

Online purchases grew by approximately 10 percent from 2010 to 2011, with the average consumer spending $1,028. Convenience and variety make shopping online an attractive option for holiday shoppers who are trying to balance their personal and professional lives, while finding the perfect gifts for family and friends.

Drawn to the allure of e-commerce, many consumers do not realize that online retail and shopping websites are the fourth most infected kind. In fact, 61% of malicious sites are actually typically trusted web sites that have been compromised.  And 1.5 million people fall victim to cybercrime every day. Here are some tips on how to avoid becoming one of them.

Password Security – Strengthen and lengthen your passwords

Mix in numbers and special characters, and avoid proper names and sequential number strings (i.e. 12345). And don’t use “password” as your password – the most popular password in 2011 was “password.”

The username and password combination is the most typical way to prove your identity on the web, but weak and ineffective passwords open the door for identity theft. The first general rule of password construction is to make it long. A short password can be cracked easily by a high speed program.

Use different passwords on different web sites and change them every so often. Failure to do this means loss of a password by one merchant could expose your accounts on all the others. Passphrases are a good way to generate strong, yet memorable passwords. Here is one example: “Oh say can you see by the dawn’s early light” becomes “0Scucb+de1.”

Trusted Websites – Only shop on reputable sites

Look for the SSL certificate and ensure the site starts with https:// and has a padlock icon.

The risks of shopping online are similar to face-to-face transactions. About.com offers the following general tips to minimize your risk. First, debit cards are the worst non-cash option. Why? If the card is stolen or the goods are not shipped, you are on the hook for any fraud or loss. PayPal and credit cards offer more robust dispute resolution and fraud prevention. PayPal will appeal to those who do not like to give out a credit card number. However, if PayPal is tied directly to your bank account, you need to monitor for suspicious activity in that account.

One good technique when considering a new merchant is to check that company name in one or more search engines. If the words “scam,” “fraud,” or “rip-off” pop up, consider yourself duly warned! Also verify that the URL matches the merchant. Scammers often load the left-hand side of the URL with real company names to lure you in.

Payment – Use only one form of payment: a credit card

Putting your debit card information online opens up details to your checking account. Consider using sites with the PayPal and VeriSign icons. Having a dedicated credit card for online shopping is a good idea; it helps you spot problems and reduces your risk to other accounts.

Secured Networks – Never shop on an open Wi-Fi network

If the network is open, your information is open.

Which network is safest for online shopping? Network security comes in layers. The first layer is physical. Wired or cabled connections beat wireless connections for security every time. Likewise, if you physically manage the network (at home or in a private office), you’re generally safer than in a public network. Home WiFi, if set up properly, is generally acceptable. Be sure you are using WPA2 security with AES encryption.

Shopping over airport WiFi is one of the most risky. Professional thieves hang out in large public gatherings and sniff the airwaves for names, passwords and card numbers.

Your data — Don’t Store Information

Merchants you visit often can serve you better if they keep some information about you. Cookies are one technique for maintaining an online relationship. As long as the relationship is safe, this is not a problem.

But be cautious about giving information. Remember: if the deal sounds too good to be true, it probably is. A deal offering brand name merchandise for pennies is probably a scam. Similarly, “free” gifts that require you to pay shipping up front are scams.

If you have to give more than an email address, a shipping address and a fraud-secured credit card number, then you should consider taking your online business elsewhere.

Robert (Bob) Bunge is an associate professor in the College of Engineering and Information Sciences at DeVry University. He has nearly ten years of teaching experience in computer information systems, network security and simulation development. As a cyber security and cloud computing expert, Bunge has presented on various subjects at numerous events, including the NWSec Conference and the Washington Association for Skilled and Technical Sciences Conference.

photo credit: ultracase via photopin cc

November 11 may be Veteran’s Day in the U.S. and Remembrance Day in Canada, but in China it is “double sticks” day — 11/11, get it — and is the equivalent of our Valentine’s Day.

The numbers, frankly, are astounding:

• $3.06 billion USD in sales
• 109 stores with more than $1.6 million USD in sales within 12 hours
• One brand (Tmall) with more than $2.1 billion in sales
• 213 million active accounts
• 105 million orders
• 7 million mobile accounts active in the first hour
• $84 million in sales via mobile just by 2 p.m.

Taobao may not be well-known on our side of the Pacific Ocean, but it is the 13th-most-trafficked site in the world according to Alexa, and it is owned by one of the largest e-commerce companies in the world, Alibaba. But it’s not a single vendor, like Amazon (mostly) is.

Essentially, as one of our readers comments, Tmall and Taobao, both owned by Alibaba, are the Amazon and eBay of China, though both use Taobao’s payment systems.

Taobao.com

(And yes, that is the Alibaba that Yahoo owns a piece of, and which is trying to buy itself back.)

According to West, it is common for Chinese retailers to not set up their own e-commerce capability, but to set up a shop on Tmall, the busiest part of Taobao. According to the infographic below, Tmall’s sales were $2.1 billion U.S. and Taobao’s were almost $1 billion U.S. (thanks for the translation, Dan).

“Some people are doubting the numbers,” he told me this afternoon (Wednesday morning in China). “But it’s not like the U.S. where there are many, many e-commerce sites. Here there’s pretty much the one.”

If we can believe these numbers, this is simply a stunning example of what a billion-plus people in a single nation can do online, particularly as incomes rise across China. West contrasts it to Cyber Monday in the U.S.  – coming up soon — which saw 2011 sales of a comparatively small $1.25 billion across all online retailers, not just one.

That’s impressive.

Here’s the Taobao infographic for our Chinese-reading audience. The one part I can read: 191 hundred million RMB … which is the equivalent of $3 billion U.S.

photo credit: bfishadow via photopin cc

Well, perhaps it’s not quite time for Christmas music. But for those who want to prepare their websites for the most important shopping events of the year, now is definitely the time to get ready.

Cyber Monday generated more than $1 billion in sales in 2011. Almost half of online shoppers spend more money online in the Thanksgiving weekend than they do the entire rest of the year. And for some retailers, the Hanukkah to Christmas shopping season brings in almost half of the year’s revenue.

So you’d better be prepared to handle millions of shoppers.

But it’s not just about server capacity. It’s also about remarketing programs, free shipping offers, preparing for mobile, conversion rate optimization, shopping cart abandonment reduction, optimizing for search and social traffic, and more.

Monetate, the online marketing optimization company, put together an infographic highlighting some of the key things anyone who sells online should know and do — before the holidays hit.

photo credit: Joriel “Joz” Jimenez via photo pin cc

With record-high Cyber Monday and Black Friday sales, online retailers came out as winners this year. The music industry, especially because of the sales of holiday music, had a strong season as well. Given that many people flock to the movies for Christmas, its no surprise that box office sales were up more than 60 percent for the Christmas weekend. And smartphones had a fabulous holiday season too because of a 140 percent increase in iPhone and Android activations.

But not every company benefited from the holiday season. According to Reuters, Sears’ and Kmart’s sales are down 5 percent from this time last year. Sears Corporation owns both retailers and announced Wednesday that it will be closing many Kmart and Sears stores next year. Kmart was hit hardest in its electronics department, which faces stiff competition from Walmart and Target. Sears is suffering from empty stores and lower quality shopping experiences.

For most businesses, this year’s sales figures for the holidays were strong. But for stores that entered the fourth quarter struggling to stay strong in the marketplace, this shopping season didn’t offer much help. For more stats on the holiday winners and losers, check out the infographic below.

[Infographic via FastUpFront]

Market research firm comScore said the most recent week saw three days eclipse $1 billion in spending each, led by the record-setting Cyber Monday at $1.25 billion.

Growth slowed somewhat in the later part of the work week, but strengthened on the weekend, with sales up 17 percent. For the week ending Dec. 4, sales were $5.8 billion, up 15 percent.

“We are now entering the portion of the season when online retailers typically reduce their promotional activity as they attempt to restore their margins, which can sometimes contribute to temporary softness in spending growth rates,” said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni. “However, this will likely be immediately followed with an acceleration in the spending rate as we approach the middle of December, which is sure to bring us several more billion dollar online spending days.”

The strongest overall spending gains have been driven by the mid-income segment (households earning $50,000-$99,999) at 19 percent, while spending among upper-income households ($100,000 and higher) is growing at a rate of 16 percent. Lower-income households (Under $50,000) are seeing a more modest increase of 9 percent.

The gains this year are driven by spending per buyer, rather than the number of buyers. The latter drove growth in the past couple of years. The number of buyers is up just 3 percent, while dollars per buyer is up 12 percent.

Santa image via ShutterStock

Market research firm comScore said Sunday that shoppers spent $6 billion on Monday through Friday last week. Typically, about 40 percent of spending happens in the last two months of the year.

“Cyber Monday kicked the week off with a bang as consumers opened their wallets to the tune of $1.25 billion, but it was only the beginning of a very strong week of online holiday spending,” said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni in a statement. “As the deals from this week expire, it will be important to see the degree to which consumers return to the same retailers to continue their holiday shopping, thereby helping improve retailers’ profit margins, or if we experience a pullback in consumer spending – which has occurred in previous years – before promotional offers and spending intensity pick back up in earnest around mid-December.”

Cyber Monday sales were $1.25 billion, the biggest online shopping day in history. On Tuesday and Wednesday, online shopping sales also broke $1 billion each day (Tuesday Nov. 29 was $1.12 billion; Wednesday Nov. 30 was $1.03 billion). Heavy discounting and promotions, as well as free shipping, got shoppers in the holiday spirit. About 63 percent of sales had free shipping, compared to 52 percent a year ago.

“Consumers have come to expect free shipping during the holiday promotion periods, and retailers, in turn, have realized that they must offer this incentive,” said Fulgoni.

Online sales were up 15 percent to $18.7 billion in November and the first two days of December, compared with the comparable period a year ago. Overall, online shopping accounts for 8 to 10 percent of holiday spending.

A year ago, Cyber Monday sales topped $1 billion for the first time. Black Friday sales were $816 million, up 26 percent from a year ago. Cyber Monday was $1.25 billion, up 22 percent from a year ago. The week ending Dec. 2 was $5.9 billion, up 15 percent.

Market researcher comScore reported that the first 28 days of November generated $15 billion in online sales, up 15 percent from $13 billion in the corresponding days a year ago. This year’s Cyber Monday — as the first Monday after Thanksgiving is called — was the second day ever to pass the billion-dollar threshold, comScore said. Cyber Monday is typically the most popular online sales day because gift givers are confident their packages will arrive before Christmas day.

On Thanksgiving, sales were $479, up 18 percent from a year ago. Black Friday sales were $816 million, up 26 percent from a year ago. On the Thanksgiving weekend, sales were $1.03 billion, up 16 percent.

“Cyber Monday was yet another historic day for e-commerce, with online spending reaching a record $1.25 billion,” said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni. “While last year saw Cyber Monday rank as the heaviest online spending day of the year for the first time ever, it will be interesting to watch the next couple of weeks to see if any future individual days in 2011 manage to leapfrog this year’s highest day-to-date.”

Average spending per buyer is up 9 percent and the number of buyers were up 11 percent. About 10 million people bought online on Cyber Monday. The average online buyer conducted 1.9 online transactions for a total of $125 in spending. Half the dollars spent online at U.S. web sites originated from work computers, so that means people were shopping while they were supposed to be working.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

If the name “Cyber Monday” makes you think of your shameful AIM exploits in the late ’90s, a new trend may make your day.

According to data from eBay, PayPal, IBM and GSI Commerce, mobile activity spiked yesterday as early holiday shopping took off.

Traditionally, the Monday after Thanksgiving has been a heyday for online retailers. But with more and more consumers accessing the web from smartphones and tablets, a fair amount of Cyber Monday shopping is going down via mobile channels.

Today, eBay Mobile stated U.S. shoppers spent two and a half times more on the online auction and shopping site’s mobile channel than they did on Cyber Monday last year.

According to data from IBM, Cyber Monday saw an 10.8 percent in mobile visitors to ecommerce sites, up from 3.9 percent in 2010. And it wasn’t just empty traffic; mobile sales were up, too, from 2.3 percent last year to 6.6 percent yesterday.

Also, PayPal Mobile said it saw a 552 percent year-over-year increase in global mobile payment volume for Cyber Monday activity. PayPal also saw global mobile payment volume more than double (a 154 percent increase) compared to activity on an average Monday and a 17 percent increase over Black Friday 2011 activity.

And ecommerce firm GSI Commerce said its clients saw a 374 percent increase in U.S. mobile sales between Cyber Monday 2010 and yesterday.

An eBay spokesperson said the company “expects that mobile shopping will remain popular with shoppers throughout this holiday season.

“As we are apt to say, both consumers and retailers are set to benefit from the convenience provided by shopping via mobile anytime, anywhere.”

Overall, Cyber Monday sales were expected to reach a record $1.2 billion, this year, with mobile sales doubling year over year. The number of mobile shoppers rose from 3.6 million consumers in 2009 to 7.3 million in 2010 and an estimated 17.8 million this year.

“A new retail is emerging where online and offline shopping have merged due in large part to mobile technology and its continued growth,” said Steve Yankovich, eBay’s vice president for mobile, in a statement today.

“eBay… is enabling this new commerce landscape by helping holiday consumers shop anytime, anywhere, and by being the partner of choice for retailers and sellers of all sizes.”

The most popular Cyber Monday categories on eBay Mobile were Clothing, Shoes & Accessories; Computers & Networking; Jewelry & Watches; Collectibles; Toys & Hobbies; Cell Phones & PDAS; and Sporting Goods.

eBay Mobile and PayPal Mobile shoppers hailed predominantly from LA, New York, Houston, Chicago, Miami, and Athens, Georgia.

And since we know y’all want to know the Android/iOS split, here’s the skinny from IBM: The iPhone and iPad were number one and number two for driving mobile retail traffic. iPhones accounted for 4.1 percent of traffic and iPads served up 3.3 percent. Android delivered 3.2 percent.

Also, iPad shoppers, said IBM, “continued to drive more retail purchases than any other device, with conversion rates reaching 5.2 percent compared to 4.6 percent.”

Image courtesy of joshb.

If you haven’t gotten a gift for your robot this Cyber Monday (what, you don’t have one yet?), you might want to think about visiting the RobotsAppStore, the Internet’s first portal for paid robot apps. The RobotsAppStore hosts a variety of programs created by enthusiasts worldwide who want to extend the functionality of robots everywhere.

A”programmable robot” is something of a misnomer if you stop to think about it. In order for a robot to do anything, it had to be programmed by somebody.

“The robot itself is just a device without the software,” says RobotsAppStore founder and chief executive officer Elad Inbar.  ”The software is actually what is giving it the core, or the benefits that we humans want.” Reprogramming a robot to do something new really isn’t a leap. Neither is connecting it to the Internet in order to in download new programs. Hundreds of millions of smart phone owners do it every day to get Angry Birds, Yelp or apps that tell us when the next bus is going to arrive. Soon connecting a robot will be no different.

The smart phone revolution, which was ushered in by Apple’s iPhone, began little more than four years ago. Today there are more than 500,000 apps in the iTunes App Store.

There are 17 million personal robots in the wild, according to the International Federation of Robotics. Inbar says that there are 6 million Roomba units alone. Roombas are robots that automatically sweep and vacuum,  and use infrared to find their way around. They’ve been modified in a number of amusing ways, such as  being programmed to select a Guinness from a row of beer cans.

RobotsAppStore predicts that the market for robot apps will grow from around 500 apps today, to 750,000 unique apps within four years. At that rate there will 18 billion downloads, worth $3 billion.

Inbar brought a Nao humanoid robot to the VentureBeat office to demonstrate the capabilities of an App-store connected robot. Designed by Aldebaran Robotics from France, The Nao costs about $15,000, and is  just shy of two feet tall (57 centimeters). It walks upright and  has the same range of motions as a toddler. However, because it’s loaded with sensors, it has the ability to navigate a room, track objects and respond to people and faces.

In the video above, you can see the robot following a red ball based on programmer’s instructions. At 1:04, you can see Nao dancing along to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,’ and someone programmed the robot to mimic the choreography from the classic music video. What it could do someday is bound only by the limits of the human imagination. With such a wide variety of robotic forms already available, there are almost no end to the possibilities.

“They’re actually smart computers with motors, with cameras with sensors and so-on,” says Inbar.  ”Applications is the next evolution. Applications is trivial. It has to happen.”

There are currently five members of  the RobotsAppStore team, and the company has received $250,000 in angel funding from friends, family and colleagues. The company is currently looking to raise a new round of investment.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Maybe “cha-ching” should be “ra-ring,” as PayPal had a 514 percent increase in mobile payments this Cyber Monday from last year.

Just as people adapted to purchasing online, now they are becoming more accustomed to buying through their smartphones. PayPal is seeing a six-fold increase in mobile payments, as smartphones move toward owning half of 2011′s mobile marketshare. A recent Nielsen study states 43 percent of mobile phone owners are smartphone users, 62 percent being 25 to 34 year-olds. The payments company saw an even bigger mobile increase, 516 percent, this past Black Friday.

“Based on the volume of mobile purchases made throughout the weekend, it seems that as we predicted throughout 2011, mobile shopping has hit its stride this Holiday season,” said PayPal Shopping Specialist Claudia Lombana in a blog post.

The boom in PayPal’s Black Friday mobile purchasing happened between 1 and 2pm. Today’s 514 percent only reflects mobile purchases made as of 11am Monday, and the company says it will reveal more details Tuesday morning.

According to IBM, retailers’ website traffic was 11.85 percent mobile users as of 3pm Pacific Time today. iPhones accounted for the majority of the mobile traffic, followed by Android devices and lastly the iPad.

On the other side of eBay, the e-commerce site saw an impressive response to its iPad 2 sale. The company offered white 16GB iPad 2s for $50 off the retail price, and sold out its entire stock in less than 2 hours. eBay says it had four iPad purchases a minute in the time it took to sell out the offer.

Cyber Monday sales may reach $1.2 billion this year, up from $1 billion last season. Part of that increase might be due to shoppers either not finding what they wanted on Black Friday or wanting to avoid its crushing crowds altogether. Ultimately, it seems that the fictitious capitalist holiday is here to stay.

Of the businesses that are benefiting, none have had more of a boost than online retail giant Amazon. As VentureBeat’s Jennifer Van Grove notes, Amazon sales jumped 30 percent on Thanksgiving Day and continued to climb throughout the weekend. With that kind of growth, along with some killer deals, Amazon’s Cyber Monday might end up being the climax for the entire holiday season.

But Cyber Monday is hardly a recent phenomenon. In fact, it first kicked off six years ago as a way for online retailers to compensate for the lack of brick and mortar store locations. Check out the infographic below for a deeper look at the history of Cyber Monday (click image to enlarge).

[Infographic via YouNeverLose.com]

So who is this year’s biggest winner on the web? Survey says, Amazon.

Amazon sales jumped 30 percent on Thanksgiving Day and continued to climb throughout the weekend, suggesting a massive Cyber Monday climax, according to data compiled by e-commerce software and services provider ChannelAdvisor.

ChannelAdvisor calculates its same-store sales metric by tracking the sales of more than 3,000 retailer customers to determine year-over-year growth.

Amazon saw 50 percent  sales growth on Black Friday, 49 percent growth on Saturday and 59 percent growth on Sunday, making it the undisputed winner in terms of same-store sales growth, according to ChannelAdvisor data.

Holiday 2010 vs 2011 -- Amazon

Those numbers sound impressive, but comparatively speaking the online retailer and Kindle maker is a bit behind its growth of last year. In 2010, the company skyrocketed to 80 percent sales growth by Cyber Monday, albeit in a far less linear fashion (as ChannelAdvisor’s chart depicts above). And with some of the big deals Amazon is offering customers today, there’s still a chance it could have another record day.

Across the board, e-commerce sales showed 17 percent growth on Thanksgiving Day, 20 percent growth on Black Friday, 21 percent growth on Saturday and 27 growth on Sunday.

eBay has faired remarkably well, as early data from the company already suggested, and ChannelAdvistor puts the company’s sales growth at 15 percent for each day of the holiday weekend.

Holiday 2010 vs 2011

Altogether, the data suggests that online consumers are scoffing at the idea of just two blowout holiday discount days. Instead, they’re spending continuously online and via mobile, and at accelerating levels throughout the Thanksgiving Day holiday weekend.

[Image via luxuryluke/Flickr]

The deal, $20 for $40 worth of Newegg credit (it’s now expired), sent a horde of eager bargain hunters to Google Offers, but the site was clearly unprepared for the onslaught of traffic.

While trying to purchase the deal, I received multiple error messages from Google Offers, mainly around being unable to retrieve my account information. The site gave me further errors when I was finally able to purchase the deal, and it took longer than usual to process the purchase. Plenty of others I’ve talked to experienced similar issues, and a quick search on Twitter revealed others having trouble with Google Offers.

It’s understandable that Google Offers would experience a bit of a slowdown given such an enticing deal, but it’s not exactly heartening to see the site falling apart before your eyes. It took me around 10 minutes to finally purchase the deal, and others I’ve chatted with were unable to complete their purchase before the deal reached its maximum number of buyers.

If Google can’t manage handling an offer for a popular online retailer, I can’t imagine that it’d be able to handle something like last year’s infamous Groupon Gap deal ($25 for $50 worth of credit).

Update: A Google representative issued the following statement to VentureBeat about the trouble: “We are aware of this issue and are looking into it.”

Cyber Monday sales may reach $1.2 billion this year, reports the LA Times, up from over $1 billion last year. 122 million Americans are expected to take part in Cyber Monday deals, and the number of consumers using their smartphones to shop is expected to double, according to a recent survey by BigResearch.

By comparison, Black Friday sales this year were $816 million (up 26 percent from a year ago), according to ComScore.

Not surprisingly, the rise of Cyber Monday seems to follow the rise of e-commerce in general. As ComScore’s Andrew Lipsman points out, Cyber Monday was just the 12th-biggest online shopping day back in 2006, but it steadily rose through the years, reaching the No. 1 spot for the first time last year.

Shop.org first coined the term “Cyber Monday” in 2005 as a marketing term to explain the noticeable rise in online shopping sales the Monday after Thanksgiving. The notion was that consumers were returning to high-speed internet connections at work and following through with purchases they had in mind over the holiday weekend.

Last year, over 12.1 percent of consumers surveyed by BigResearch said they planned to shop at work. This year that number has jumped to 15.9 percent. The company recently found that 76 million Americans will likely shop online during the holiday season.

It’s worth noting just how much mobile shopping has exploded when it comes to Cyber Monday. 3.6 million consumers used their phones to shop for deals in 2009, a number that is expected to triple to 17.8 million this year. That’s double the number of consumers who used their phones on Cyber Monday last year (7.3 million), according to BigResearch.

Amazon just revealed some of its deals for the conveniently made-up holiday, which includes a 250-gigabyte Xbox 360 (with Halo: Reach and and Fable III) for a cool $199, and Nokia’s former flagship phone, the N8, unlocked for just $299.99.

Other discounts include a recent 10-megapixel Sony Cybershot model for $199, and a Pentax K-5 DSLR camera for $999.

The company revealed that last Cyber Monday was its busiest day last year, with over 13.7 million items ordered at a speedy 158 items per second. It’ll be interesting to see if the same is true this year, since Amazon is also offering some deep discounts for Black Friday.

Cyber Monday used to be an easy way to classify e-commerce sales during the Thanksgiving holiday period, but with so many online retailers now offering Black Friday deals, it seems there’s less of a reason to justify another consumer spending orgy.

Photo via Scott Akerman

Market researcher comScore said that Free Shipping Day generated $942 million in online sales, up 61 percent from a year earlier. The numbers so far show that this season has been the busiest ever for online retail sales. That’s both a good leading economic indicator for the overall economy, as well as an indicator that online sales are taking market share away from physical retail stores. It shows that online retailers are figuring out how to promote their goods so that consumers make their last minute purchases online instead of in crowded malls.

Online shopping has been strong all season. Free Shipping Day (when 1,500 online merchants offered free shipping) was eclipsed by Cyber Monday (Nov. 29), which saw sales of $1.028 billion, and by Green Monday (Dec. 13), at $954 million. Year to date, the first 47 days of the November-December shopping season generated $27.46 billion in sales, up 12 percent from a year ago. Cyber Monday is now expected to become the busiest shopping day of the year; that’s a first for the first Monday after Thanksgiving.

In the most recent week, online sales were $5.50 billion, up 14 percent from a year ago. Four days this season have surpassed $900 million in sales. Free Shipping Day occurs later in the season each year as retailers get more efficient at shipping goods. At least half the transactions of the past five weeks have used free shipping, said Gian Falconi, chairman of comScore. Free shipping has enabled consumers to shop longer and get better deals before they finally decide to place online orders.

For the season, computer hardware is the top-growth category, with sales up 25 percent compared to last year. Purchases of Apple iPads, eBook readers, and laptops drove much of the growth. Low pricing on flat-panel TVs continues to drive sales in consumer electronics, which grew 22 percent. Books and magazine sales were up 21 percent, computer software was up 16 percent, and toys were up 15 percent.

[photo credit: shopsland]

In the first 43 days of the November-December shopping season, consumers have spent $23.82 billion online in the U.S., according to market researcher comScore. That’s up 12 percent from the same period a year ago. For the week ending Dec. 12, spending was $5.31 billion, up 12 percent. And on Monday Dec. 13, online sales were $954 million, up 12 percent from a year ago. Green Monday is the day when online sales typically peak, as after this date many online retailers can’t guarantee they can ship goods for arrival before Christmas. But this year, retailers are guaranteeing on-time delivery and free shipping for sales through Dec. 17.

Most of the big shopping days have been strong this year, with Thanksgiving Day sales up 28 percent, Black Friday (Nov. 26) sales up 9 percent, and Cyber Monday (Nov. 29) sales up 16 percent. Green Monday was the second-heaviest online spending day on record, behind Cyber Monday, which topped $1 billion, said Gian Fulgoni, chairman of comScore. The rest of this week should see an online shopping frenzy, as two-thirds of consumers still haven’t finished their holiday shopping, comScore said.

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reported that physical retail sales rose 0.8 percent in November from a month before, reaching their highest level since 2007. Sales are up 7.8 percent for the three months ending in November. The surge pushed stocks to a new two-year high.

[Top photo: Reuters]

Cyber Monday is typically a day when the most popular online retailers, like Amazon.com and computer hardware retailer Newegg.com, offer the most deals. It’s a way to lure in consumers that are looking to get their holiday shopping done early but don’t want to be trampled by shoppers at 4 a.m. the day after Thanksgiving.

Sales at online retailers were also 59 percent higher than the roughly $650 million generated by foot-traffic directed sales on Black Friday. To date, shoppers have spent a total of around $13.5 billion for gifts and the like during the holiday season since the beginning of November. Consumers are also spending more when buying from online retailers this year. The typical shopper spent an average of $114, which is up 12 percent from typical sales last year. The number of buyers edged up only slightly, growing from 8.7 million consumers last year to 9 million this year.

It seems that at least a few individuals were slacking off and getting their holiday shopping done during work, since most of the shopping occurred on computers that were connected to a workplace network. That’s pretty typical, though — more than half of online retail sales happened at work last year as well. But as a sign of tougher times, the number of shoppers buying while at work actually fell this year. So more employees are actually buckling down and working regardless of the sweet deals happening on the Internet.

Holiday sales are expected to ramp up over the next several weeks in advance of Christmas. The next three weeks are typically the best performing weeks for retailers — especially online retailers. In 2009, retailers raked in around $5 billion each week for the three weeks leading up to Christmas.

[Photo: garethjmsaunders]

On Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving and the beginning of the holiday shopping season, in case you need a reminder) US online merchants saw $648 million in sales this year, up 9 percent from last year. Since the beginning of November (which is what comScore counts as the “holiday shopping period”), people have spent $11.6 billion on Web shopping, a 13 percent increase. And that’s all before Cyber Monday (tomorrow), which is supposedly when holiday shopping really moves online.

Those numbers are even better than the general uptick in Black Friday spending. The National Retail Federation reports that more people were shopping this weekend (212 million compared to 195 million last year) and each of them spent an average of 6 percent more money.

Among online retailers, Amazon.com was the big winner, with 25 percent more unique visitors than last year. Walmart was down 1 percent, while Target was up 9 percent, and Best Buy was up 1 percent.

[image via Flickr/mmlolek]