It’s a new year. And now that the dust has settled on holiday spending, marketers can take a look back at 2016 and see what worked and to make plans for the new year. According to recently released data from NetElixer, mobile marketing and SEO is growing in importance and that trend should continue in 2017.
NetElixir released the report 2016 Holiday Season: By the Numbers. Their data indicated that compared to 2015 total ecommerce holiday sales, preliminary data from 2016 shows an increase of 10.43 percent.
A 10 percent year-over-year increase in sales is great news in itself but the bigger news is about the role mobile marketing played in this increase. According to the new NetElixir data, about one-third (30%) of spending was done via mobile device.
Of course, using numbers based on data from the entire U.S. can be hard to translate to local small businesses. The NetElixir researchers also did some regional searches and found where the increases were greatest.
When NetElixir analyzed the ecommerce sales data by U.S. regions, they discovered that the highest increase in the south with a 19.9 percent increase. The next highest was the west with 9.5 percent, followed by the central U.S. with 6.5 percent and then the northeast with 5.8 percent.
“We attributed the conservative growth figures this year to several factors like earlier than usual holiday shopping with major online events like Amazon’s Prime Day, consumers using their mobile devices to purchase yet making less expensive purchases on mobile, and to the uncertain political environment,” said Udayan Bose, CEO of NetElixir, according to media reports.
“The uptick in mobile activity this holiday season caused conversions and impressions to increase fairly dramatically, but caused overall AOV (Average Order Value) to decrease as people typically spend less on their mobile devices than on desktops. The time of day rates are also important findings for retailers as they plan for future digital marketing campaigns, which should be focused on the afternoon hours when consumers are showing the most engagement and intent to purchase.”
There was also some good news for SEO marketers. More holiday shoppers are using search engine when planning their shopping trips. During the 2016 holiday seasons, search marketing impressions increased by 35 percent over last 2016 and search marketing conversions increased by 18 percent.
Another useful tidbit of information can be used to plan ads and content marketing. Even though people can shop 24 hours a day, according to NetElixer, 12 p.m. – 8 p.m. were the hottest shopping times.
Now that 2016 is over, marketers can use this information to plan better and more effective campaigns in 2017. For more research that can help your marketing campaigns, read this article on the best ways to use e-coupons for customer loyalty.