Cyber 2020: The Week that Lasted a Month (and then some)

By: Deanna Avi Madigan

Cyber Week 2020 has come and gone and we are now days away from Christmas 😱.

2020 has been one heck of a year and Cyber Week 2020 kept us on our toes. We gathered all the details about this year’s Cyber Week and highlighted the top 3 takeaways.

1. Cyber Week was good, but not the best

Overall, the general sentiment is that Cyber 2020 was “good,” but certainly not at the top of the predictions everyone hoped for. Why? We think it is because everyone is still looking to be wowed like they were back in May when there was stimulus in the economy and stores were closed in most of the country. Another possible contributor: Pre-Thanksgiving sales. Amazon *technically* kicked off holiday shopping by moving Prime Day to October. In turn, this Cyber Week had far less peaks – everything was more spread out.

While Cyber Week didn’t fully meet expectations, we still saw year over year growth.

Salesforce reported a 36% growth in global digital sales during Cyber Week, with a record of $270 billion spent worldwide. Similar to many of our clients, Salesforce saw Black Friday as the largest day in comparison to Cyber Monday. While still strong, there were not many new offers.

Adobe reported US Digital sales grew to $34.4 billion during Cyber Week to represent a 20.7% year-over-year increase, and Adobe reported Cyber Monday as bigger than Black Friday.

2. Amazon

Amazon won Cyber Week (and beyond). Amazon kicked off holiday buying in October and continued to increase sales through Cyber Week. While Amazon has not released complete data, it has been reported that third-party sellers exceeded $4.8 billion in worldwide sales from Black Friday through Cyber Monday – more than a 60% increase compared to 2019.*

*CNBC

3. Shippageddon

We were warned about potential shipping delays dubbed “Shippageddon.” Many retailers adjusted shipping deadlines to be earlier to ensure packages arrived by Christmas. Delivery issues are now being publicized more and more and we could start to see problems next week.

We are using ShipBob to track average days to ship for the top carriers.

Considering the year we have all had, we are considering Cyber Week a success. Will 2021 be better? Stay tuned – we will be dropping all of the themes and trends we are watching for next year soon! In the meantime, if you are looking for more information on Cyber Week 2020, check out our full recap attached below.

**Cover image from Shopify.

Cyber Week Recap

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