The Black Friday shopping madness seems to have not much to do with social media as shoppers referred by social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube generated only 0.34 percent of online sales on Black Friday.
This marks a 35 percent decrease from the year before and Twitter literally contributed nothing (0 percent) to the overall revenue, reveals an IBM study.
While Facebook had 0.68 percent referral traffic which is a minus 1.45 percent change year-on-year. But, Twitter generated no referral traffic at all. Despite the low numbers, shoppers expressed positive consumer sentiment on promotions, shipping and convenience as well as the retailers themselves at a three to one ratio.
The IBM report said online sales on Thanksgiving grew by 17.4 percent followed by Black Friday where sales increased 20.7 percent over last year. Mobile purchases soared with 24 percent of consumers using a mobile device to visit a retailer's site, up from 14.3 percent in 2011. Mobile sales exceeded 16 percent, up from 9.8 percent in 2011.
iPad contributed to nearly 10 percent of online shipping of the Black Friday sales, generating more traffic than any other tablet or smartphone. This was followed by iPhone at 8.7 percent and Android 5.5 percent. The iPad dominated tablet traffic at 88.3 percent followed by the Barnes and Noble Nook at 3.1 percent, Amazon Kindle at 2.4 percent and the Samsung Galaxy at 1.8 percent.
While consumers spent more overall, they shopped with greater frequency to take advantage of retailer deals and free shipping. This led to a drop in average order value by 4.7 percent to $181.22. In addition, the average number of items per order decreased 12 percent to 5.6. Overall 58 percent of consumers used smartphones compared to 41 percent who used tablets to surf for bargains on Black Friday.
