Amazon Prime Day – deals, devices and dollars

The four-day version of Amazon Prime Day was a hit, and the results offer some important indicators about the state of digital commerce.

Like any summer event, Amazon Prime Day came and went in the blink of an eye, even in its new longer format. But by taking the time to look closely at some specific data from the promotion, retailers can gain a more detailed understanding of the digital commerce landscape.

Let’s make a deal

As mentioned above, Amazon Prime Day, which had been a two-day event since 2017, lasted four days. Sales results indicate there was plenty of consumer appetite for those extra 48 hours of savings. 

According to Adobe data, the four-day event generated a record $23.8 billion in online spend, representing 28.4% year-over-year growth from $14.2 billion during the 48-hour Prime Day 2024. 

While this wasn’t quite double the revenue driven by the previous two-day event, it still shows a healthy sales trend for the additional two days. In addition, Numerator data indicates average household spend rose 2.6% even as average order size dropped about 8%, suggesting customers placed more, smaller orders during the longer sales period.

The four-day Prime Day event still trails the five-day Cyber Week period between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday as the ultimate extended online shopping bonanza (Salesforce data shows digital sales hit $76 billion in the U.S. in 2024), but demonstrates that if you keep offering customers online deals, they will keep taking advantage of them.

Going mobile

Adobe data also indicates that mobile was the dominant transaction channel during the Prime Day event, driving 53.2% of online sales and contributing $12.8 billion in online spend. 

This was less mobile-centric than Cyber Week 2024, which according to Salesforce analysis had more than 80% of traffic and 70% of sales in the U.S., driven by mobile devices, but still the latest clear signal that mobile is becoming the preferred channel for digital commerce.

Given mobile’s emerging and likely growing dominance as the channel of choice for online shopping, if you haven’t already the time is now to adopt a “mobile-first” approach to your e-commerce customer experience. Design websites for their appearance, flow and usability on mobile devices and then tailor that foundational design for desktop.

Also, having a user-friendly and highly functional customer app is critical. Especially where many customers are suffering “app fatigue” from the deluge of consumer apps now on the market, make sure yours stands out as being easy and rewarding to use. 

You should also add to your customer app’s appeal with gamification elements, direct link to rewards and membership programs, and integration with popular mobile wallets and payment platforms.

[READ MORE: Survey: In-app purchasing ability most desired for food & beverage, retail]

The varied path to purchase

Adobe analysis of Prime Day results also reveals that customers are increasingly availing themselves of new solutions and resources as they shop online. For example:

• During the event, generative AI traffic to U.S. retail sites (measured by shoppers clicking on a link) increased by 3,300% year over year.
• While paid search remained the top driver of retail sales online (28.5% share of revenue, up 5.6% year-over-year), affiliates and partners — which includes social media influencers — saw a greater lift (19.9% share, up 15% year over year). Adobe’s data also showed that influencers converted shoppers (individuals making a purchase after seeing influencer content) 10-times more than social media overall.
• Buy now, pay later (BNPL) orders accounted for 8.1% of online orders (up from 7.4% in 2024). This amounted to $2 billion in online spend from July 8 to 11, representing 33.3% growth year over year. 

It is also likely that agentic AI shopping bots and assistants will continue their fast rate of adoption among consumers and be much more of a factor in digital sales as soon as Amazon’s Prime Big Deal Days fall extravaganza.

Retailers need to deploy solutions that enable them to capitalize on all of these new and growing sources of digital traffic and revenue, as well as explore partnerships with influencers and content creators.