January vs Christmas sales overview

Previously I looked into our stats over the Christmas period. This data showed that Christmas performance painted a confusing picture and one that was difficult to generalise about. Now is a good time to look at the trends we saw throughout January across the network and if it was any clearer. Where possible I have provided a comparison to what we saw last year.

Sales Revenue

• The peak day of sales revenue post Christmas was 2nd January. This was almost identical to the post Christmas peak we saw on the 29th December.
• The peak in sales revenue was almost identical to the peak that we saw in January 2011. This fell on the 3rd January last year.
• The peak sales revenue was down on what we saw last year. With the increase in VAT last January we saw consumers spending more to make a saving before the VAT increase came into play. We saw this driven by electrical, home appliances, computing and furniture retailers.

Transactions

• The 2nd January also saw the highest number of transactions meaning that it is not a great surprise that revenue generated for our advertisers also peaked on this day.
• In our Christmas stats, mobile transactions saw a slightly later peak. In January we saw the same peak for mobile as we did through desktop. The 2nd was a bank holiday – we typically see an increase in mobile traffic on weekends/bank holidays where people are away from the office.
• In January, 6.1% of transactions came through mobile devices. This is up from 2.2% in January 2011
• Latest mobile figures for February indicate that transactions through mobile devices have exceeded 7% on some days

(Mobile sales plotted on a 2nd axis)

Traffic

• We saw traffic also peak on the 2nd January
• Each day throughout January we delivered over 1,000,000 visitors to our advertisers
• As with transactions, we also saw clicks through mobile devices peak on the same day as desktop.
  

(Mobile traffic plotted on a 2nd axis)

AOV

• Average order values were generally higher post Christmas than they were in the run up to Christmas.
• This peaked at just over £80. The average order values throughout January were just under £70 or over.
• Compared to January 2011, the AOV was down across the network. Again this is reflective of consumers spending more before the increased VAT rate came into place last year.

Again, the conclusion that we are able to draw from this data is that the January sales period is difficult to generalise about. One of the most clear cut patterns is that consumers were spending more post Christmas – a trend that was also reflected in the previous year’s stats. Last year these average order values were higher as consumers spent more before the increase in VAT came into play.

It is also interesting that our mobile data fell in line with desktop throughout January. The peak day for sales through mobile and desktop was consistent whereas we saw a slightly later peak in mobile transactions in the run up to Christmas. The peak day for mobile sales in January saw almost five sales a minute through mobile devices.

Mobile continues to be a major focus for us and we will be monitoring performance through mobile devices to see how it differs from desktop moving forward.