Ecommerce services provider ChannelAdvisor Chief Executive Officer and founder Scot Wingo provides the first update on ecommerce sales for the “Cyber Five” days known as Thanksgiving day through Black Friday and Cyber Monday. ChannelAdvisor is a global provider of ecommerce related services to many of the world’s top ecommerce retailers and traditional frahcnises who sell online.

Thanksgiving – Day 1 of the Cyber Five.

Thanksgiving and the first day of what we call the Cyber Five – the five most important days for online shopping because they give us a very good view of where the holiday is trending.

Each day for the next five days we’ll be providing an intra-day view of that day and the complete data for the previous day and filling out this Cyber Five Dashboard. 

 

It’s important to note the dates – we compare the day last year to the corresponding Cyber Five day, not the same day of the month. For example, for Thanksgiving we are comparing 11/24 of 2011 to 11/22 of 2012 – otherwise we wouldn’t be comparing Thanksgiving to Thanksgiving.

Unfortunately since this is the first day of the Cyber Five, we can only provide the intraday read on how Thanksgiving is doing.

 (See chart)

Note that intra-day numbers can be volatile as partners systems do/can get backed up and may change dramatically through the day and into the evening as all of the data transfer and order processing ‘catches up’.

Here’s what we are seeing in the data:

  • Amazon is a little sluggish growing at 28.5% y/y so far vs. the MTD trend of 41.5% – I suspect that will be almost all attributable to system lag as it appears Amazon is a bit behind.
  • eBay – eBay is doing very well coming in already up 36.4% vs. the MTD trend of 24.5%. We’ve talked about mobile trends this year which is a tailwind for eBay. Also there seems to be a LOT of popular items that are out of stock (we monitor nowinstock.net for a good view of this). Items such as WiiU, LeapPad2, Skylanders and more are out of stock across the internet, which drives people to eBay. Also historically eBay has been a back-end loaded channel – perhaps their ad campaign married with their push into fixed price and branded outlets is starting to change consumer behavior? We’ll have to see how the rest of the holiday plays out to call that, but it is definitely a strong start for eBay out of the gate.
  • Comparison Shopping Engines – CSE’s continued to see some headwinds.
  • Search – Search is the big surprise surging to up 22.6%. Looking at the data, we are seeing retailers VERY heavily promoting their early Black Friday (also known as Thanksgiving) deals and offers. That seems to have moved a very large amount of search spend onto Thanksgiving day that wasn’t usually happening in past years. It will be interesting to see if that hurts the SSS for the rest of the Cyber Five, or if it was incremental.

What’s next?

Today is Black Friday and we’ll have both an intra-day read on how the day is going and by then we’ll have the complete view of Thanksgiving to report. Stay tuned and I hope everyone has a great day!

  • Friday, November 23 (Black Friday) – We’ll have an early read on Black Friday trends
  • Saturday, November 24 (Cyber Saturday)- We’ll be releasing complete Black Friday details
  • Sunday, November 25 (Cyber Sunday)- We’ll be sharing Cyber Saturday results
  • Monday, November 26 (Cyber Monday)- We’ll be releasing Cyber Sunday results and have an early read on Cyber Monday
  • Tuesday, November 27 – We’ll be reporting complete Cyber Monday and Cyber Five updates
  • Thursday, December 6 – We’ll release complete November SSS results with added color
  • Friday, December 7 – We’ll take a look at the first week of December and Holiday YTD
  • Friday, December 14 – We’ll check in on the second week of December and Holiday YTD
  • Friday, December 21- We’ll see how things are looking during the third week of December
  • Monday, January 7, 2013- We’ll share December 2012 SSS and Holiday Wrap Up

Notes: ChannelAdvisor, which is privately held and back by investors such as eBay and Raleigh-based Southern Capitol Ventures, produces $50 million a year in revenue, according to Reuters wire service. Wingo is an investor in Google and Amazon. eBay is an investor in ChannelAdvisor.  Captiol Broadcasting, parent company of WRAL Tech Wire, is an investor in Southern Capitol.

[CHANNELADVISOR ARCHIVE: Check out  a decade of ChannelAdvisor stories as reported in WRAL Tech Wire.]