Black Week 2016 catapulted into record-breaking-territory for both Black Friday and Cyber Monday globally. Black Friday alone experienced $3.34 billion in sales, and Cyber Monday topped that figure with $3.45 billion in sales, according to Adobe Digital Insights, surpassing even their own prediction of 9.4% growth over the previous year’s numbers for Black Week.
VTEX sites were very fortunate to be a part of these incredible numbers, and the outcomes were excellent throughout all of our markets. During Black Week 2016, sites running on the VTEX platform experienced higher than projected sales, and the turnout was outstanding. Across a variety of emerging markets around the world, VTEX proved to be not only capable, but fully versed in handling the high traffic that comes with periods such as Black Friday and Black Week with high performance and obviously no downtime.
Despite the challenges and discourse in international markets throughout the world, VTEX has managed to stay ahead of the curve with its highly innovative platform, which has resulted in 54% growth in regards to 2015 sales. Just on Black Friday, the amount of traffic on VTEX-powered sites surpassed 100 million sessions. In contrast to last year’s sales, VTEX sites drastically outperformed their 2015 numbers, making this year’s Black Week extremely successful overall. Just for some perspective – 1,134,963 orders were placed on VTEX websites during Black Week. This clearly demonstrated VTEX’s effectiveness to support the scaling needs of an array of high-volume retailers during the most critical period of sales of the year.
For most retailers, this period presents the most lucrative time of the entire year, and having an efficient, optimized website to manage the demands of consumers is an absolute necessity. Likewise, as was witnessed in the US market, where the Macy’s site crashed, causing the company to lose a significant amount of sales that would have otherwise been conversions, according to a report from CNBC. As a result, Macy’s experienced lower than anticipated numbers for Black Friday 2016. From a retailer’s perspective, no one wants to be in this position during Black Week!
For us at VTEX, we are not only impressed, but humbled by the sales numbers we have experienced. We always strive to better our platform, enhancing our services, and continuously reinventing how digital commerce operates, especially in regards to efficiency and performance. For our clients, we are pleased to see these high sales numbers and to have had a pivotal role in supporting their businesses during such a crucial time of sales. Black Week 2016 was a major success, and we look forward to charging ahead into 2017 powered by these results.
