eMarketer Webinar: Lessons from Holiday Shopping 2015—What You Need to Know for 2016

© 2016 eMarketer Inc.
Lessons from Holiday Shopping 2015:
What You Need to Know for 2016
Yory Wurmser
Retail Analyst
February 25, 2016
Made possible by

What Happened in the
2015 Season?

Ecommerce thrived while overall US retail sales
disappointed during the 2015 holiday season
1.7%
13.4%
Ecommerce US Retail Overall
Image source: commons.Wikimedia.org

A weak overall
retail climate
makes the
ecommerce
growth recorded
during the
holiday season
even more
impressive

Oil prices weighed down overall US retail sales
in Q4 2015
 Gas station sales
account for roughly
10% of US retail
sales
 Q4 retail sales
growth was 1.5%
overall, but 3.7%
when gas station
sales are excluded

Even separating out oil prices, foot traffic was
down in stores
 5% drop in foot traffic
on Black Friday,
excluding car
dealerships and
grocery (Foursquare)
 6.4% drop in foot traffic
over the season (RetailNext)
Image Source: Jtalledo, commons.Wikimedia.org

Two big factors boosted US ecommerce during
the 2015 holiday period …
Image Source: Yory Wurmser

1. Amazon had a tremendous holiday season
 24.1% growth in US sales during the
“Cyber 5” (11/26–11/30) (Channel Advisor)
 16.8% growth in US sales for November
and December (Channel Advisor)
 35% YoY growth in Amazon Prime
membership, ending the year at
54 million (Consumer Intelligence Research Partners)
 $88 billion in 2015 sales, up 33% from
2014 (Macquarie Research)
 26% of US ecommerce in 2015 was on
Amazon and Amazon Marketplace
(Macquarie Research and eMarketer calculations)

More than a
third of visits to
the top 15 US
retail websites
in December
2015 went to
Amazon

A slight
majority of US
internet users
planned to
conduct most
of their 2015
holiday
shopping on
Amazon

2. Smartphone-based mcommerce growth in
2015 was explosive
Source: eMarketer
Smartphone Mcommerce growth = 95.8%
Optimized
websites
Easier
payment
Bigger
screens

Mobile sales growth exceeded desktop growth
by nearly 10 times during the holiday season
6%
59%
Source: comScore

Smartphones’ share of seasonal ecommerce
grew in 2015, while tablets’ share of traffic rose
 Smartphone traffic share
climbed from 31.2% to 40.5%
 Smartphone sales share rose
from 9.1% to 16.4%
 Tablet traffic share fell 1.5
percentage points to 11.9%
 Tablet sales share grew from
13.4% to 14.6%

Mobile’s
performance
was even
better on
peak shopping
days

Although mobile conversion rates lag behind
desktop, the gap is narrowing
 Roughly 3:1
ratio in 2015,
compared to a
nearly 4:1 ratio
in 2014

Mobile conversion rates are improving due to
better mobile optimization
“If we look at our clients that have the best,
lowest friction mobile checkout, and have the
best mobile executions, they’re nearing
two to one as their average mobile
gap.”
—Jason Goldberg, Senior Vice President, Commerce
and Content Practice, Razorfish

Forecast for 2016

In 2016, smartphones will once again lead other
channels in sales growth
Retail Ecommerce
Smartphone Commerce
Retail Overall 2.0%
Source: eMarketer
Mcommerce
13.0%
49.9%
39.1%
1.1%Non-Ecommerce Retail

Quarterly
growth in
overall US
retail sales in
2016 will peak
during Q3
and the
back-to-school
season

Retail
ecommerce
should follow this
pattern, with Q3
as the peak
growth quarter
in 2016

Holiday 2016 should be roughly in line with
2015’s performance
 13.3% ecommerce growth
for holiday 2016 will be in
line with 2015
 1.8% growth in total retail
will be roughly the same
as 2015, but less
oil-driven
 Ecommerce will surpass
10% of total retail for the
first time in 2016

Additional Trends to Watch
in 2016

1. Experiential gifts will continue to become
more important
Image Source: Airbnb.com

Experiential gifts are becoming prevalent,
especially among US millennials
Would like to receive an
experiential gift:
Total: 36.5%
35–44: 43.4%
25–34: 49.6%
18–24: 55.0%
Source: NRF, December 2015

Top types of gift card purchases planned for
November 2015:
 Restaurant: 35%*
 Department store: 34%*
 Cash card: 23%*
 Coffee shop: 20%*
 Entertainment: 17%*
*Percentage of US consumers
Source: NRF, November 2015
Image source: www.starbucks.com

Starbucks gift cards are one of the leading
presents in the US
1 in 6
US Consumers
received a Starbucks gift card in the 2015 holiday season
Up from 1 in 7 in 2014
Source: Starbucks

Food service and drinking place sales continue
to grow more quickly than US retail sales overall

2. Better fulfillment options will lengthen the
online shopping season
Image source: www.clipartbest.com

In 2015,
roughly half
of US internet
users began
holiday
shopping
before
Thanksgiving

Early holiday shopping starts before Halloween
25%
of holiday shoppers started before Halloween, and
3%
were almost finished by Halloween in 2015
Source: Civic Science

Thanksgiving
Day is now
the start of
the core
holiday
season
In 2015, it overtook Black
Friday as the busiest
digital shopping day of the
US holiday season on the
Connexity network

Thanksgiving
retail
ecommerce
sales growth
outpaced
Black Friday
and Cyber
Monday last
year

Final days before Christmas had the highest
year-over-year ecommerce growth rate in 2015
56%
YoY increase in ecommerce sales on December 23
Source: Adobe

Retailers feel a sense of urgency to deliver
holiday purchases more quickly
“People know that they can shop
later because they know that it will
be delivered. … We saw that the average
number of days to ship [via] ground delivery
was about 3.45. This year, there were 10
percent of the retailers [in our study] that
actually shipped in one day. … Retailers
feel a logistical sense of urgency to
deliver faster.”
—Lauren Freedman, President, the e-tailing group

A quarter of
US internet
users say that
same-day
delivery of
holiday
purchases is
important

3. Buy online, pick up in-store (BOPUS) is
growing
Image Source: www.nordstrom.com

US holiday shoppers used BOPUS at record
levels in 2015
32%
of holiday shoppers bought online for in-store pickup
Source: International Council of Shopping Centers

Some US retailers saw BOPUS surpass 10% of
ecommerce sales in 2015

A majority of
US internet
users ages 21
to 39 planned
to use BOPUS
for holiday
shopping in
2015

Cost and
speed have
been the
leading
reasons that
consumers
choose
BOPUS

Role of Shopping Apps
During the Holidays

Despite apps’ popularity, mobile shoppers still
turn to their mobile browser for holiday shopping
 Nearly two-thirds
of US smartphone
and tablet users
preferred mobile
browsers for their
holiday shopping in
2015

A minority of US internet users download retailer
apps
25%
of US internet users use a retailer app
(excluding Amazon’s)
Source: TSYS

Mobile web drives the majority of mobile
shopping traffic
More than twice as many
shopping visits take place on mobile web compared with apps
Source: Morgan Stanley

But for
leading US
retail sites,
apps capture
the majority
of time spent
via mobile
device

A clear
majority of US
mobile users
prefer to
interact with
their favorite
brands via an
app

During Q4 2015, the majority of mobile
transactions were on apps
 Apps drove 54% of mobile transactions in Q4 2015 (Criteo)
 Apps had conversion rates 20% higher and average order
values 2% greater than desktop in Q4 2015 (Criteo)

New retailer apps are designed less as catalogs
and more as omnichannel tools
“The first generation of application design was
just imitating the mcommerce experience and
imitating the dot-com experience. You had to
have your product catalog on the phone.
… But now what you’re seeing is that there is
this new phase of mobile retail apps
2.0 where the savvier retailers are
stepping back from that and saying
this tool really connects the entire
brand and store experience.”
—Maya Mikhailov, CMO and Co-Founder, GPShopper

There is a
very large
in-store
component to
mobile
shopping

Recap
1. US smartphone mcommerce nearly doubled in 2015, and
will continue to outpace growth in other channels in
2016
2. More varied and effective fulfillment options are
extending ecommerce later into the holiday season and
into new areas
3. Consumers are shifting more spending toward
experiences, which will continue to suppress sales
growth in traditional retail

3 Tips to Have a Strong 2016
Mary (Shirley) Sheehan, Head of Product Marketing

adroll.com, @AdRoll
Tip 1: Keep your campaigns running to snap
up high quality inventory at low CPMs
What to do:
● Retarget previous purchasers with strong
calls to action (CTAs), shopping incentives
and new product offerings.
● Run loyalty campaigns based on your
customer relationship management (CRM)
data to reach previous purchasers.
After the holiday rush, CPMs drop significantly, but online shopping activity remains the same.

Tip 2: Make a great impression with clever
creative
adroll.com, @AdRoll
What to do:
● Test copy that offers great discounts and
incentives, like ‘End-of-Season Sale” and
“Free Shipping!”
● Try a creative refresh. Make sure your ads
are relevant and speak to the changing
seasons.
● Use personalized dynamic ads and carousel
ads to add engagement and higher CTRs.
The right words and images can go a long way. Keep your ads fresh and compelling to win over more
customers and make more sales.

Tip 3: Drive new customers to your site with
AdRoll Prospecting
adroll.com, @AdRoll
How it helps:
Predict new customers
Serve targeted ads based on real-time interest. Don’t just rely on
demographic data. Get results with our dynamic intent data.
Enhanced Retargeting Campaigns
Amplify the reach of AdRoll Retargeting by pairing it with
Prospecting. Prospecting drives new customers, and retargeting
brings them back for more.
Prospecting is a customer acquisition product that connects you to new, high quality audiences who
behave like your existing customers. Prospecting gives you a new way to reach additional customers.

Email webinars@adroll.com for more information
Follow @adroll

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Yory Wurmser
Lessons from Holiday Shopping 2015:
What You Need to Know for 2016
 Buy Buttons: Where Social Meets Mobile Commerce
 Loyalty Marketing: Creating Stickiness in a Distracted World
 Retailers and Digital Commerce: Trends and Benchmarks for
Five Sectors
 US Mcommerce 2015: eMarketer’s Forecast and Trends

eMarketer Webinar: Lessons from Holiday Shopping 2015—What You Need to Know for 2016

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