BigCommerce Merchants Shatter Cyber Week Records

BigCommerce reports that its online merchants collectively had a record Cyber Week, the important holiday season-long shopping weekend from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday.

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Globally, over the five-day shopping days, BigCommerce merchants hit a new record with a 32% year-over-year (YoY) increase in sales. Order volume was also up a massive 25% (YoY).

Earlier this week, BigCommerce had hinted already that its merchants were doing extremely well this year when it released sales numbers from the first two days of Cyber Week.

The final numbers for the big shopping weekend show that this trend continued from Saturday through Cyber Monday.

Even more importantly for the eCommerce platform’s merchants, collectively, they smashed holiday season shopping forecasts by Adobe Analytics (US only) and Salesforce (Globally) significantly.

“Because the days from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday are so crucial to retailers’ success for the year, it’s exciting to see BigCommerce merchants hit new highs,” said Brent Bellm, chief executive officer at BigCommerce.

“Our platform’s openness and enterprise capabilities provide the competitive advantage merchants need to succeed around the world and across multiple sales channels.”

Let’s take a look at the numbers.

BigCommerce Merchants Cyber Week 2022

On Thanksgiving day, sales were up 23% (YoY), providing a tremendous lead-in to Black Friday, when sales growth hit +31% (YoY).

But that was just the beginning, as on Small Business Saturday, merchants saw the largest increase during Cyber Week, up 36% (YoY).

While BigCommerce does not break down sales between merchant sizes, the record growth on Saturday may be attributable to its roots in serving small businesses.

Surprisingly, Sunday coat-tailed on Saturday, resulting in the second largest sales growth day of Cyber Week, up 35% (YoY).

Cyber Monday rounded out the big holiday shopping weekend with sales up 32% (YoY).

With so much emphasis over the past few years on optimizing the shopping experience on mobile devices, the one metric that actually declined for BigCommerce merchants was the share of sales on handheld devices.

This year, the share of sales on mobile devices declined to 38% (42% in 2021), and on tablets specifically, it dropped from 1.3% to 1%. While tablets are transforming the in-store retail experience, they seem to have lost the market share to drive any meaningful sales in eCommerce.

Social platforms continue to drive sales growth for online retailers and brands on the BigCommerce platform. Across the board, merchants benefited the most on Black Friday, with TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook recording the most sales on the “biggest shopping day” of the year.

BigCommerce said it was surprising that Saturday was the second busiest day for TikTok and Instagram. But considering Saturday was also the biggest day of sales growth, the two probably went hand in hand.

Flexible payment options also continue to be important this year to grow sales for BigCommerce merchants.

Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) usage increased 8% (YoY) among BigCommerce users in October. But during Cyber Week, BNPL usage skyrocketed, up 25% (YoY).

Even with BNPL loans coming under regulatory scrutiny, and more consumers getting hit with at least one late fee, the flexible payment option is as popular as ever.

And finally, the three product categories that showed the largest YoY growth during Cyber Week were; Luggage (75%), Fashion and Apparel (66%), and Travel (64%).

From the Cyber Week data BigCommerce released, its merchants collectively had a superb big holiday shopping weekend, beating industry-wide predictions.

For the eCommerce platform, this is a big win.

And while its recent feature enhancements and partnerships helped it bring more enterprise customers to the eCommerce platform — which undoubtedly contributed to this platform-wide record growth — the Cyber Week results show that merchants of all sizes can find success using BigCommerce.

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