Even though I waited until “Cyber Monday” to make my first online purchase of the holiday shopping season (and plan to have all done over this coming weekend), Black Friday consumers, particularly those interested in consumer electronics, were online in full force. The most searched for product on eBay across all categories was the Nintendo Wii console with 3,171 sold on Black Friday (Wii Fit was the second highest with 1,059 sold on the site). On Shopping.com a GPS sold every 9 minutes and an MP3 player every 11.
According to PayPal, there were 34% more transactions than 2007 and there was a 26% increase in online payment volume on Black Friday.
I found all of this information at the “eBay Holiday Media Source”. The site has been up for a few weeks now and is aimed at providing press and media with information, stats and news around eBay’s holiday offers, traffic, promotions and tips. This weekend, they posted the following media release with data coming out of Black Friday.
All great info of course but I’d like to see more. Especially more than just consumer electronics. Let’s see all the categories. Which are up? Which are down? How did Fixed Price fair vs Auctions? I’ll dig around to see if can find out more on that front.
I also saw that the Nielsen Online Holiday Shopping Index had eBay as the top online retail destination on Black Friday with 9.8 million unique visitors (Nielsen also had eBay as the top online retail destination for the month of October). However, with a number of conflicting traffic reports out there for online retail traffic that cropped up over the past week (some blogs were citing ComScore numbers, others use Nielsen as a benchmark), I want to see more information behind the figures before drawing any definitive conclusions.
In related news, eBay President of Marketplaces, Lorrie Norrington appeared on Fox Business News yesterday alongside Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne to discuss Black Friday, Cyber Monday and the rest of the holiday shopping season.
Cheers,
RBH