How We Shop Has Changed

Black Friday gained much fame for incredible “doorbuster” deals that drew flocks of people to wait all night in line as part of the lucky few who would get these items before they ran out. As we all know, the American economy has become increasingly digital, and the retail industry is certainly no exception. In addition to shoppers going online to grab Black Friday coupons, retailers have recently gained traction with Cyber Monday deals. 

We analyzed the 2014 data hour-by-hour and second-by-second.

The big question here is which day is actually more popular? We sought to answer this question by exploring the online traffic data from 2014. You can find our methodology, sources, and fair use of all images at the bottom of this page.

Black Friday vs Cyber Monday: Which is the Best to Shop

Methodology

We used two main sources to calculate the average sales and visitors per hour. We started with Adobe’s Digital Index which calculated the online sales over 24 hours for each day and measured these values for the start of each hour. Then, using IBM’s Digital Analysis Benchmark Report, we divided these hourly sales figures with the average order value to determine the number of orders. Dividing the number of orders by the conversion rate allowed us to determine how many people were shopping online. Note: This is not pageviews, but actual shopping sessions per visitor. Please consult each source for further details on the metrics used in our calculations. 

The calculations for Walmart, Best Buy, and Target were forced to use an assumption about maximum occupancy since the fire code changes per state and each store will have slightly different limits. We used a value of 60 square feet per person for each store.

Sources

Fair Use

Feel free to use any of the images found in this project. When doing so, please attribute the creators (Dealhack) by linking to this project so your audience may learn about the methodology and access all assets that are available.