Cyber Monday 2016: The Fastest and Slowest eCommerce Sites

This year, Cyber Monday took its spot at the top of the charts as the largest online shopping day in the United States; a whopping $3.45 billion was spent, up about 12% from 2015. 

Although eCommerce sites saw a large bump in sales during Cyber Monday this year, there was a 2% decrease in traffic. Could this be indicative of dwindling interest, or perhaps the dispersing of traffic and sales over the entire Black Friday weekend? My conclusion is the latter. Average order values remained consistent throughout the Black Friday Weekend: $143.56 with a standard deviation of $8.46. Americans flooded the web, just not all on one day.

Many shoppers experienced slower page speeds than normal during Cyber Monday with some sites slowing by as much as 65% - this has a direct impact on revenue.

Who slowed down on Cyber Monday?

Fastest on Cyber Monday

Slowest on Cyber Monday

Plan and prepare - your bottom line will thank you

Its a never-ending cycle of planning, preparing, and managing performance throughout the year... especially for the holiday season, and for good reason! Companies with significant slow downs during Cyber Monday most certainly lost potential customers. For example, Dover Saddlery remained slow throughout the weekend with a 40% slow down on Black Friday and a 57% delay on Cyber Monday (compared to October 28th and 31st, respectively). We've seen a slow down of this magnitude during Cyber Monday result in a $3.4 million loss.

However, not everyone fell victim to poor performance – Neiman Marcus learned their lesson from last year’s site outage and loss in sales by planning accordingly. This goes to show the importance of managing web performance with your business in mind.