In the two weeks since Black Friday and Cyber Monday, online sales volumes have remained healthy, and the shopping cart abandonment rate steadied down to more usual levels, hovering around 65 percent. But these headlines mask an underlying trend to extensive discounting in order to get the volumes.
Despite some upbeat reports, the retail sector is facing a tough Christmas. A new Christmas Retail Survey released today by America’s Research Group (ARG) and UBS suggests that sales are weaker this year than in 2008. Of those consumers not shopping, 95 percent said they will wait if necessary until December 24 to get more items on sale.
In case you hadn’t noticed, yesterday was Cyber Monday, traditionally the largest online shopping day of the holiday season. SeeWhy tracks website conversions and ecommerce shopping volumes. Online shopping volumes were up by 19 percent compared with Black Friday and up by 46 percent compared with Monday one week ago.
