Welcome to the thirty-first Week in eCommerce Data, aka Christmas Day, where Friday begins with a dose of ecommerce data. In this week’s festive roundup, we look at online holiday shopping, forecasted returns, and this year’s store closures. Plus other ecom news elsewhere!

Key insight

This Christmas season saw a growth in shipment solutions. Stores in general were under pressure to satisfy the demand of a bigger online crowd. And we saw different takes on it.

People who planned in advance saw a lot of benefit since many stores ran out of sizes and products by mid-December. Sites like Rapha were very good at communicating early cutoffs for December arrivals.

The most interesting solution we saw was from lululemon, who enabled a combination of local and national deliveries to satisfy demand – especially in big cities, which allowed them to be one of the few stores where consumers were able to purchase gifts and presents all the way up to the holiday.

Key ecommerce data

51%

of all online shoppers have done most of their holiday shopping in the first few weeks of December.

1/4

of all ecommerce sales from October and November is forecast to be returned.

11,000

store closures have been announced this year.

36%

the growth in digital sales for the first two weeks of December, as consumers rush to get ready for Christmas and New Year.

40.9%

the drop in foot traffic at stores in the final Saturday before Christmas, when compared to this time last year.

$20 billion

the forecasted earnings of Mercado Libre, Latin America’s leading ecommerce site, in 2020.

150 stores

of Dick’s Sporting Goods is set to offer same-day delivery after joining forces with Instacart.