Amazon has had it’s most successful Christmas trading period yet, shipping more than 1 billion products worldwide and accounting for 38% of online sales – and almost three quarters of them were mobile.
According to Amazon , shopping on Amazon’s free app grew by 56% this Christmas season, with shoppers on Cyber Monday purchasing 46 items of electronic equipment every second on mobile devices and 36 toys.
Amazon was also able to keep its promises and deliver timely, reliable shipping; a result of its internally owned and operated delivery logistics infrastructure, which is an advantage few other companies have. However, despite these advantages, there are still areas of weakness for other retailers to exploit: inconsistent product information, fake or paid reviews, and shipping discrepancies by sellers not using Fulfillment by Amazon.
Commenting on the numbers, Igor Gorin, the CEO of Astound Commerce says: “Amazon’s dominance during the holiday season can’t be attributed to a single factor. This is a function of their digital NDA, vision and relentless obsession with customer experience. The combination of the following factors contributed to Amazon’s success – scale and the ability to offer one of the most comprehensive selections of products in the industry, providing a simple and intuitive user experience designed with a shopper in mind, and utilizing a shipping and logistics network that consumers can depend on for every purchase. It’s this exceptional customer experience and centralized supply chain that retailers can learn from when making strategic ecommerce investments in 2017.”
Amazon’s move to mobile echoes the general retail shift to online and mobile this Christmas, as outlined by analysts. In December 2016, 24.3% of non-food retail sales took place online, according to the latest BRC-KPMG Online Retail Sales Monitor, with sales up by 7.2% compared to the same time last year.
It’s the first time in four months, says the BRC, that ecommerce sales have grown by less than 10%. Online non-food sales grew by 9.5% in December 2016, year-on-year, and in the same period, online contributed 2.9 percentage points to total non-food sales, while in-store sales made a negative contribution of 1.6 percentage points. In December alone, online contributed 2.7 percentage points.
