Back in 2020 Amazon wiped Prime Day off the calendar. With schools transferred online, the traditional back-to-school rush never happened, and Amazon’s big ecommerce event was pushed back a few months.
In 2021, Prime Day moved back to summer yet earlier than usual in June. It seemed to fit into the “Grand Reopening” in the US as Covid appeared to begin the descent into oblivion.
In 2020, Prime Day raked in eye-watering amounts of sales for many ecommerce sites both on the Amazon marketplace but also on their own websites whether they be hosted on Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Shopify, or Magento.
Retailers and brands have capitalized on the success of the traditional opening of big ecommerce sales.
So with Prime Day having already been delivered, we can unpack the contents to peek at the shopping patterns and behaviors from the ecommerce event.
Using data from Salesforce’s Shopping Index, a bundle of ecommerce insights have become available. So let’s take a look at some of the more interesting takeaways.
Soft sales
Back in 2020, non-Amazon ecommerce sites grew their sales by 66% on average when compared to 2019.
International ecommerce sales of non-Amazon retailers fell flat this year when compared to 2020. The total value of sales actually dropped slightly by 1%.
Yet all regions are not equal. The biggest regional winner in terms of year-on-year growth was APAC, which grew by 41%.
Zooming in on the country level, the biggest grower since 2020 was actually Italy, which saw yearly ecommerce growth of 47%.
Last year was unprecedented in many ways. The size of ecommerce exploded and all sorts of records were shattered in terms of sales, inventory, and traffic.
And so it was expected that in 2021 – with mixed recovery across the globe and gradual reopenings across the US along with vaccination programs reaching much of the population – levels of ecommerce would not continue its rapid trajectory but round off at some point.
With more and more people vaccinated and greater openness in Covid restrictions, shoppers are looking at other activities to spend their money on. More and more of us are spending money on travel, vacations, socializing, and end-of-school-year celebrations, which have taken the heat off of online spending.
According to the data, Fridays and Saturdays were the only two days of the week during June that saw negative year-on-year ecommerce growth.
Struggling supply and demand
Logistical issues tied to inflation and inventory problems have been causing issues in the year. It has been difficult for brands and retailers to keep their shelves stocked and shelved. Stacked on top of this was issues in labor shortages to complicate things further.
For digital shoppers, this has pushed prices higher and stayed away from slapping on discounts. In fact, the average discount was down by 13% when compared to Prime Day in 2020 – when the average discount rate was 18%.
Average order value increased by 7% while orders dropped by 8% when compared to 2020.
What were we buying?
In terms of individual items, the fastest growing product segment for shoppers during Prime Day was luggage and handbags, with their spend growing 74% when compared to 2020 Prime Day. There was clearly one thing on people’s minds.
And when it comes to bigger-ticket items, there was an increase of 67% in the total share of wallet for furniture sales. Consumers have been continuing to renovate their homes and apartments despite big increases in their prices.
And next?
Although shoppers are heading more and more outdoors, data from the Salesforce research shows that we have cut down on buying shirts and pants, with a 16% drop in general and sports apparel sales when compared to last year.
Despite buying less clothes, we were buying things to cover our feet. Footwear climbed 11% from 2020 numbers.
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