Father’s Day boosts June online sales

Summer got off to a good start for e-commerce retailers.

According to the June 2023 E-commerce Pulse from fraud prevention solution provider Signifyd, overall U.S. e-commerce sales rose 10% year-over-year. This marks the largest monthly year-over-year increase in e-commerce growth during 2023 and the first to hit double digits.

Signifyd data suggests robust online Father’s Day sales spurred e-commerce performance across most verticals tracked by the E-commerce Pulse. The leaders in June 2023 sales were electronics, up 7%, and sporting goods, up 6%, year-over-year, Signifyd data shows. Even the home goods vertical, in which online sales growth from 2022 has been in negative territory all year, rose 2% in June.

Sales growth in the apparel, accessory and footwear vertical hit a year low in June, but still rose 3% from the same month a year earlier. Increases in the fashion (12%) and luggage (40%) subcategories helped overall performance. 

In one piece of negative data, online jewelry sales plummeted 17% year-over-year in June. Shoe sales, which have been strong in 2023 according to Signifyd analysis, declined from May 2023 but still rose 5% compared to June 2022.

Inflation drives online average order value

In June 2023, Signifyd data shows the online average order value (AOV) increase continued to hover in the low single digits, up 3% from the previous year. But this was coupled with a 1% increase in the number of transactions and a 12% drop in product volume, meaning inflation was a major cause of online AOV growth. 

In the apparel vertical, June AOV was up 2% from a year earlier, but the number of transactions and productvolume plummeted 15% and 21%, respectively. And in health and beauty, AOV rose 10% but transactions and product volume fell 9% and 10%, respectively.  

Interestingly, online June sales growth of sporting goods showed an entirely different trend of consumers paying less to purchase more items. For the second consecutive month, Signifyd e-commerce statistics show the AOV in sporting goods declined by 13% from a year earlier, while the number of transactions rose 23% and product volume was up 7%..

Other findings

• Buy now, pay later (BNPL) sales plummeted by 16% year-over-year.
• Gift card sales were flat in June, but spending on gift cards rose 154% year-over-year.
• Fraudulent bot attacks increased overall 239% from a year earlier, and aged account fraud attempts, when scammers try to take over accounts that have gone dormant, rose 281%. Total spoofing attempts that try to mask the device or IP address from which an order originates rose 219% year-over-year.
• Consumer abuse, when legitimate customers make false claims that an item was not received or was damaged or significantly not as described, soared in May 2023 but declined overall by 7% in June from a year earlier, and is down or in negative figures across most verticals.