Black Friday, Amazon Australia & YouTube for Kids

Episode 19

Episode Highlights

• 2:06 -  Consumer behaviour data as compiled by Adobe for the Thanksgiving and Black Friday sales. It’s interesting to note the significant percentage of smartphone traffic, but the drop in purchases in comparison to desktop purchases. We talked about consumer behaviour and the importance of focusing on the mobile eCommerce experience.  
• 04:06 - Popular items that were sold throughout the Black Friday sales event.
• 05:31 - The emotional aspect of Black Friday, who is leading online sales and being sensitive to the emotion associated with the buyer cycle and impulse buys.
• 07:50 - Examples of Christmas deals you can implement to encourage sales and retain customers.
• 09:15 - Amazon Australia was supposed to have launched on the day before Black Friday, but there have been a few glitches in the system that has stopped them from doing so. Richard breaks down the recent SMH article.
• 12:35 - The difference between shopping online and shopping in a store and how the online experience can’t fully replicate the impulse-purchase check out line in a store.
• 14:23 - Vogue Magazine and the Body Shop have been creating podcasts for quite some time, targeting specific demographics. We talked about how the time is NOW to create that additional piece of content that your target audience can engage with, as voice is becoming an increasingly popular way to consume content.
• 18:03 - Josh talks about the Mashable.com article titled, “YouTube is finally removing child exploitation videos.” This segment covers the questionable video content that has been published on YouTube, and the steps they are taking to mitigate this problem. We talk about the things you can do to make sure your child is watching the right content on YouTube.

Black Friday Sales and online consumer behaviour

Black Friday has come and gone, and while we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving in Australia, we take advantage and go all-in on the biggest sale event of the year. As usual, there were big discounts to be had, with many retailers partaking in the sales event, both online and off.

Adobe compiled data in an awesome one-pager for the Black Friday sales for the United States, which is a big help in understanding behavioural trends of consumers.

While sales were down in comparison to last year, it was interesting to note that 45% of online traffic was made using a smartphone, but only 26% of purchases were actually made. In turn, 45% of traffic was made up of desktop visits, but a whopping 62% of purchases came through desktop.

There are a few reasons for this:

1. Consumers may have become frustrated with the mobile experience and decided to complete their purchase on the desktop site
2. Consumers may have wanted to explore their selected products and felt as though they could adequately do this on a desktop
3. Smartphone purchases may be made up of impulse purchases, which means that the sale could potentially drop off if the consumer has to switch from their smartphone device to their desktop to complete the purchase

Your target audience will always have different behavioural patterns with different devices, so you always need to make sure that both desktop and mobile eCommerce experiences are tailored to their needs.

Remember: shoppers are much smarter than they were even 5 or 10 years ago, and a bootstrap solution isn’t going to cut it anymore. 

Got questions? 

We want to hear from you! If you have any questions about this episode, email us: podcast@bam.com.au or tweet us @bamcreative.