Huge Black Friday boost in web orders

(click to enlarge)

Excellent contributions everyone. Keep them coming!

Here’s a preliminary analysis on a very hefty Black Friday boost this year (remember it’s only 1 day out of 91 for the whole quarter, so this growth needs to be maintained in order to significantly affect the quarter):

.                Order Rate (K/day)      Y/Y change
.               -------------------    --------------
.                2007   2008   2009      2008    2009
.  Americas     -----  -----  -----    ------  ------
Month up to TG   30.2   21.3   22.6    -29.5%  + 6.4%
Black Friday    274.3  240.6  317.0    -12.3%  +31.8%
BF Multiplier     9.1   11.3   14.0    +24.4%  +23.8%

.   Europe             -----  -----            ------
Month up to TG          11.7   12.6            + 7.8%
Black Friday            95.3  189.5            +98.8%
BF Multiplier            8.2   15.1            +84.4%

US+EU Combined         -----  -----            ------
Month up to TG          32.9   35.2            + 6.9%
Black Friday           335.9  506.5            +50.8%
BF Multiplier           10.2   14.4            +41.0%

 Asia/Pacific                 -----
Month up to TG                  5.9
Black Friday                   17.4
BF Multiplier                   2.9

US+EU+AP Combined             -----
Month up to TG                 41.1
Black Friday                  523.9
BF Multiplier                  12.7


Although chosen as consitently as possible given available data points,
some time periods and windows are slightly different. This may result
in somewhat distorted yearly and regional comparisons.

.                2007   2008   2009
.               -----  -----  -----
Month up to Thanksgiving window (days)
Americas           23     29     31
Europe                    29     33
Asia/Pacific                     63

Black Friday window (hours:minutes)
Americas         8:45  21:39   3:09
Europe                 21:39   8:04
Asia/Pacific                   9:40

I'll try to have an update on this around the end of next week.

May I take your order, please? Q1 redux

This can be a great way to gauge Black Friday (and Cyber Monday) online sales. Remember I once again rely on crowdsourcing for this aspect of my model. Oh and don’t forget those European Online Store orders are very welcome too.

Just go here and note the date/time and W# of as many orders you wish to share (you can cross out the last 2 or 3 digits).

For those who’d like to run their own analysis, here's the raw data on the last few orders I've received:

Date    PST   Web #  Region    Contributor
-----  -----  -----  --------  ------------
08/25  04:42  90442  Europe    ITalian Pro
09/24   N/A   57279  Asia/Pac  benoir
10/24  15:35  91380  Europe    JML
11/11  11:38  65748  Americas  macross
11/16   N/A   65837  Americas  BillH
11/26  18:30  57652  Asia/Pac  benoir
11/26  23:10  91799  Europe    ITalian Pro
11/27  04:10  57659  Asia/Pac  benoir
11/27  07:14  91863  Europe    JML
11/27  10:54  66186  Americas  justforkix66
11/27  12:20  66207  Americas  BillH
11/27  14:09  66232  Americas  Pete_y_48
11/27  15:29  66249  Americas  daveynb
11/27  19:37  66297  Americas  justforkix66
12/02  01:00  66480  Americas  fhatta

(keep checking here, as I'm updating these as I get them)

The historical record provides great context for this unique metric. Here’s the whole history of web orders volume per quarter. And here’s last year’s analysis of the daily order rate around Black Friday.

Thanks!