Digital Christmas: A Record-Breaking Year for Online Shopping

[nusratjahan]

Salesforce , the global leader in CRM, has released its new 2018 All Wrapped Up Shopping Report , highlighting the key trends for the 2018 holiday shopping season. The survey collected and analyzed the habits of hundreds of millions of consumers in over 30 countries where its market-leading Commerce Cloud platform is available, billions of consumer engagement insights from its Marketing Cloud solution , and 200 million customer service requests handled using Service Cloud .

Salesforce 's Top Holiday Shopping Trends for 2018

Retailers enjoyed strong growth in digital activity during the holiday season: between November 20th and December 3rd, 25% of consumers (the highest rate ever) began thinking about holiday shopping, completing an order, adding one or more products to their cart, starting the checkout process, or using the website search function. Fifty percent of holiday shopping was completed by Monday, December 3rd, and 80% by December 15th, the last day available to receive shipments before the holidays.
For the first time, mobile shopping surpassed desktop shopping: 48% of orders were processed via smartphone, compared to 44% on desktop (an increase of 19% compared to 2017). 66% of traffic originated from mobile devices (an increase of 11% compared to 2017), with a remarkable 74% of active mobile users even on Christmas Day, the most mobile-centric day of the entire season. Both orders and traffic recorded the highest mobile engagement rates ever (60% and 74%, respectively).
The significant increase in digital wallets has made checkout easier: 28% of mobile shoppers used solutions like Apple Pay or PayPal, and on peak sales days, 29% of orders were paid with a digital wallet.
Cyber ​​Week was the busiest week for shopping and the one with the most discounts: Cyber ​​Week accounted for 37% of the entire season's revenue, a 4% increase from 2017. Discounts began earlier, with an average percentage of 27%. The biggest reductions of the season occurred during Cyber ​​Monday , which saw a record average discount of 31%. Eighty percent of orders placed during Cyber ​​Week took buy bulk sms service advantage of free shipping offers. The free shipping offer continued the following week, and 68% of post-Cyber ​​Week orders were eligible for this benefit.
Social media dominated holiday traffic. With a 22% increase in social traffic, Facebook and Instagram drove 93% of visits to e-commerce sites. Over the entire period (November 20 – December 26), social traffic increased 34%, with the top brands in social media being Nike, Amazon, and iPhone. “Retailers enjoyed strong digital growth this past holiday season,” said Rob Garf , VP, Industry Strategy for Retail at Salesforce . “Digital transformation, powered by mobile, social, and artificial intelligence, has made it easier for consumers to navigate the world and make seamless purchases even when they’re on the go.” Salesforce also offers significant support for B2C CRM .
Here’s how it helped retailers enhance personalized commerce, marketing, and customer service during the 2018 holiday shopping season:
Commerce Cloud customers saw 18% growth in digital orders compared to the same period last year. Global brands and retailers saw overall digital revenue growth of more than 12% throughout the season, with overall traffic increasing 10%. The largest gains occurred on December 23.
With Marketing Cloud, over 88 billion text messages, emails, and notifications were sent during the entire holiday shopping season (November 20 – December 26).
Customer service agents received over 2.7 billion support requests and over 1.2 billion calls through Service Cloud during the holiday season.