Shopify merchants generated more than $2.9 billion in sales worldwide during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, according to data collected by the e-commerce company. The dollar amount is up 63 percent from last year’s $1.8 billion (all monetary figures are expressed in USD).
“These unprecedented sales demonstrate the power of borderless commerce.”
– Shopify
Shopify pulled sales data results run from the start of Black Friday in New Zealand on November 29 to the end of Cyber Monday in California on December 2. That period this year saw 25.5 million consumers make a purchase from a Shopify merchant, representing a 57 percent growth from the same period last year.
“These unprecedented sales demonstrate the power of borderless commerce and how independent businesses and direct-to-consumer brands around the world have become the heroes of Black Friday [and] Cyber Monday,” the company wrote in a statement on its website.
Sixty-nine percent of sales were made on phones or tablets, while just 31 percent occurred on desktop, suggesting that mobile was the preferred shopping channel this year for e-commerce. The top product categories were apparel and accessories, followed by the health and beauty segment.
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Top selling cities included New York and Los Angeles, with Toronto coming in sixth. The number of Canadian consumers purchasing from Shopify merchants grew by 57 percent since last year, with Canada as the third top-selling country, behind the United States and the United Kingdom. Australia and China followed in fourth and fifth, respectively. Cross-border shopping also increased, with 19 percent of all checkouts shipping from one country to another.
#BFCM scoreboard for everyone keeping track at home:
Shopify merchants during #BFCM…2017: ~$1 billion
2018: $1.8 billion
2019: $2.9 billionEntrepreneurship: W
Direct-to-Consumer: W
Traditional Department Stores: ?♂️— Harley Finkelstein (@harleyf) December 3, 2019
The average cart price for merchants in Canada was $96.30, a very slight increase from last year’s $96.23. The average time to checkout came to 27 minutes, down from last year’s average of 31.6 minutes. Global sales per minute peaked at around 3:00 pm ET on Black Friday at over $1.5 million, compared to about $870,000 in 2018, with the peak sales hour remaining the same at 11:00 am ET.
The Ottawa-born e-commerce company recently hit one million merchants on its platform, worldwide. In Shopify’s recently-released Q3 results, the company grew its revenue to about $390.6 million, although its growth had slowed to the lowest rate increase in four years.
Image courtesy Shopify