Lorre White celebrates Cyber Monday – how did it go?

BRITISH-BASED online retailers are expected to see their busiest day in history today, as US shopping event Cyber Monday takes place in the UK. The annual discount day – which in America traditionally falls on the Monday after Thanksgiving – was launched to encourage shoppers to buy online in the run-up to Christmas.

Internet sales are expected to surpass all expectations with Visa Europe predicting that £320 million will be spent via its cards alone, reports The Evening Standard. The number of internet sales in total are predicted to top 6.8 million in the space of 24 hours.
Picture credit: GoRunway

“A combination of pay day for the majority of consumers falling on the last Friday of the month and a weekend spent browsing the shops results in shoppers logging on to buy their gifts online on the subsequent Monday,” said a spokesperson for Visa Europe. “All of these factors will result in consumers spending £222,222 per minute, making 4,722 transactions every 60 seconds.”

And what better way to celebrate Cyber Monday than by taking part in Vogue’s Online Fashion Week? Our five-day shopping extravaganza kicks off today and brings you everything from festive fashion tips to unmissable competitions.

If you believe the hype, then you’ll know that over the weekend e-commerce sites were overwhelmed with frantic shoppers clamouring for bargains.

Major retailers would have us believe that shoppers have nothing better to do the day after Thanksgiving than trawl the internet looking for the best deals on the latest technologies.

But is that actually the reality? As well as blogging seven awesome Black Friday and Cyber Monday infographics, I’ve rounded up some stats to show the sales and traffic boost that occurs on Black Friday and Cyber Monday…

Black Friday is contagious

Sentiment analysis of social networks by Sales force Marketing Cloud suggests that the buzz around Black Friday is beginning to spread across the Atlantic.

Over the past 30 days the UK accounted for 1.1% of the total Black Friday conversation, though obviously the US dominated with more than 2.3m mentions (88.8% of the conversation).

Sentiment in the UK was over 60% positive, in comparison to the US where its posts were 50% negative.

And as this word cloud shows, Amazon and GHD were among the top brands mentioned in the build up to Black Friday.

Black Friday spending tops $1 BILLION

Online spending in the US reached $1.042 BILLION on Black Friday according to comScore, representing an increase of 26% on 2011.

Thanksgiving Day, while traditionally a lighter day for online holiday spending, achieved a strong 32% increase to $633m.

Overall spending between 1 and 23 November was $13.7bn, up 16% from $11.8bn in 2011.

Seven awesome infographics