Article

Amazon Prime Day sets records once again

Amazon's annual two-day sales event, Prime Day, not only proved lucrative for the omnichannel giant but for niche and small retailers as well.

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July 17, 2019 by Judy Mottl — Editor, RetailCustomerExperience.com & DigitalSignageToday.com

Amazon's annual two-day Prime Day sales event this week bested the omnichannel retailer's Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales of 2018 and was the largest shopping event in the company's history.

Prime members, who had access to 1 million exclusive deals on Monday and Tuesday, bought more than 175 million items, and the sales event proved to be Amazon's biggest sales day for its own devices, according to a press release.

Prime members also bought more than $2 billion in products from independent small and mid-sized businesses.

The omnichannel retailer, which does not disclose specific revenue figures from the event, claims Prime members worldwide saved more than $1 billion in purchases, and millions of items were shipped in one day or less. Amazon also saw the biggest influx of new Prime subscription members than it has on any previous day, according to the release.

More than 1 million toys, 400,000 pet products, 200,000 televisions, 350,000 beauty items and 650,000 cleaning products were sold. Top-selling items in the U.S. included the Instant Pot, the 23andMe Health ancestry kit and the LifeStraw personal water filter.

The sales extravaganza did have some hiccups, however, with some consumers reporting that placing items in the online cart proved problematic. Those issues, according to one industry watcher, should serve as a reminder to every retailer in developing and designing e-commerce sites and apps.

"This year's Prime Day was an overall success for the millions of deal-hunting consumers and multiple retailers that launched their own sales in tandem with Amazon," Mario Ciabarra, CEO of Quantum Metric, told Retail Customer Experience in an email. "These Prime Day glitches are good reminders for any retailer to instill a more proactive mindset when developing and designing their websites and applications, as the reality is many often struggle to fix issues like these until days later."

Ciabarra said retailers need to know about consumer frustrations well ahead of big sales events, whether its slow loading times or a faulty coupon code.

"Whenever a retailer is expecting a flurry of online shoppers, it would bode well for them to understand what part of the online shopping experience frustrates customers the most if something were to not go according to plan. If not, and such issues occur, it makes the retailer look unprepared, which hurts the customer-to-brand relationship and long-term loyalty, not to mention missed revenue as well," he said.

A boon for SMBs, competitors

In response to Prime Day, retail competitors, including Target, launched sales and promotions ahead of Prime Day and during Prime Day.

The first day of Prime Day brought a 64% increase in overall retail online sales, and the benefits even reached niche retailers (those with less than $5 million in annual revenue), as they saw a 28% increase in e-commerce sales over the two days, according to Adobe research. Last year, according to Adobe, niche retailers saw a decrease in revenue on Prime Day.

The second day of Prime Day brought even greater rewards with a 72% spike in online sales compared to an average Tuesday, for large retailers (those with $1 billion or more annual revenue), according to Adobe.The second day of Prime Day was the fourth, outside of the holiday season, to surpass $2 billion in online sales, according to the data.

The physical retail segment also experienced a healthy sales boost with buy-online, pick-up-in-store order values experiencing 11% growth in value Monday, according to Adobe.

The consumer email experience played a role, as delivery of an "excellent" email experience brought a 52% lift in revenue over the two-day period, according to Adobe. The retailers that lacked a good email strategy saw only a 23% lift.

"Prime Day has become an indisputable summer shopping holiday, greatly benefiting online retailers that can attract consumers to their site through compelling email campaigns or offering value-add services like buy-online, pick-up-in-store," said Jason Woosley vice president, commerce product and platform at Adobe, in the release. "Due to its 'halo effect,' large retailers with major discounts online reaped the benefits of Prime Day, seeing 68%  lift in revenue across the two days, while niche retailers also saw a significant increase in online sales at 28%. This suggests that people are comparison shopping more than ever and will open their wallets to those who offer the best deals, regardless of the size of the retailer."

According to an Edison Trends report, which compared Prime Day figures for this year and last, sales were up 79% compared to 2018 with Amazon taking 88% of the market share and Best Buy, Walmart, eBay and Target claiming the remaining share.The data noted that customer spend in the first 24 hours of Prime Day this year beat both 2018 and 2017 activity.

About Judy Mottl

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Judy Mottl is editor of Retail Customer Experience and Digital Signage Today. She has decades of experience as a reporter, writer and editor covering technology and business for top media including AOL, InformationWeek, InternetNews and Food Truck Operator.

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