Amazon Prime Day: Morning clouds lead to sun

So far, it appears that some early Prime Day performance issues on the Amazon.com site gave way to much stronger results as the day continued.



According to multiple media reports, a glitch was causing problems for some U.S. and U.K. consumers attempting to check out their Amazon purchases the morning of Tuesday, July 12. Numerous shoppers tweeted their frustrations using hashtags such as #PrimeDay and #PrimeDayFail.



However, more encouraging analysis from Clavis Insight determined that by mid-day ET, Lightning Prime Day Deals, available for a set period of time, usually two to four hours, were selling out but not at a rate that they did in 2015. Of the first 100 Lightning Prime Day deals listed, only eight had sold out. This is better in-stock performance than the 40% of active Lightning Deals that had sold out late morning 2015.



In addition, Clavis Insight analysis showed that by mid-day ET, the only “spotlight deal” promoted at the top of the page which had sold out was a Samsung curved TV. Considering that as many as 60% of spotlight deals were on the top-selling products on Amazon in their categories, this was also impressive in-stock performance.



In other good news for Amazon, despite numerous consumer tweets complaining of checkout issues a vcnd poor deal quality in the morning, Adobe Digital Insights analysis of social media sentiment data showed generally positive signs. Compared to 2015, Prime Day-related social media sadness was down 26% and joy was up 43%. In 2015, 50% of overall social sentiment regarding Prime Day was related to sadness.



However, Adobe Digital Insights indicates the main contributor to sadness in 2016 has been people having issues adding items to their cart and checking out, compared to the lack of blockbuster deals which most bummed out Prime Day commenters in 2015.



Some of the top products receiving positive attention were Kindle-related products, deals on the Amazon Echo, and the Xbox One Bundle.



New York, Texas, Florida, and Washington were the top U.S. states engaged in Prime Day. Similarly, in 2015 Californians talked about Amazon Prime Day the most with New York coming in second.



Chain Store Age will continue providing analysis and coverage of Prime Day results this week as more data becomes available.