Black Friday to head up November to remember for UK e-tailers

Black Friday 2017 will contribute towards Brits spending £20 billion online in November, with more than 50% of transactions expected to take place on mobile alone, according to Salmon.

The e-commerce consultancy has released the following early updates:

·        Bargain hunters stayed up late – with 26% of all visits between midnight and 6am taking place in the first hour (midnight to 1am). There was a lull between 1am and 5am, before traffic peaked again at 6am

·        6am was the busiest period with 81% of visits coming from a mobile device – this represents an 8% increase on 2016, predominantly due to shoppers purchasing as they wake up and commute to work

·        74% of transactions came from a mobile device. Salmon expects this to decrease as consumers arrive to work.

The run up to Black Friday has also seen the return of the ‘Basket Bandit’, aka shoppers who identified items in advance, put them into their online shopping baskets and waited to see if these items were discounted over the course of Black Fiveday.