Saturday, November 28, 2009

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.

Friday, November 27, 2009

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!