Three Tech Lessons from Thanksgiving Weekend

So the retail industry made it through another five-day Thanksgiving weekend, stretching from Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday. As the dust begins to settle and the pundits make their pronouncements, let’s look at a few technology lessons retailers can learn from this year’s kickoff to the all-important holiday sales season.



Little Mobile is All Grown Up

Reports indicate mobile devices generated between a quarter and a third of all online sales during Thanksgiving weekend. This represents significant growth in consumer reliance on mobile devices to perform online shopping, an activity that itself grew quite a bit in popularity.



Interestingly, smartphones drove more traffic than tablets, but tablets drove more sales than smartphones, and iOS users seem to generally be more valuable customers than Android users. But the overall lesson here is that mobile has officially come of age. Consumers rely on their mobile devices to obtain information and perform tasks in all areas of their daily lives, shopping and browsing included.



It is thus imperative for every retailer to offer an optimized mobile experience that is distinctly tailored to the features and limitations of mobile devices, while also being seamlessly integrated with other physical and digital channels (more on that momentarily). Also what retailer wouldn’t want to offer customers a fully operational storefront they carry in their pocket?



The Store Remains The Same (But Different)

Although there is agreement among the experts that in-store sales dropped substantially from Thanksgiving weekend 2013 while digital sales grew, the vast majority of sales during the period still occurred in good old-fashioned brick-and-mortar stores.



It’s easy to get distracted by all the shiny, new omnichannel, mobile and social technology toys available for retailers to play with. However, while retailers need to keep up with digital innovation, they also need to keep up with traditional store systems like POS, signage/shelf tags, and inventory tracking.



Retailers should further note that innovation is occurring even for store-based technology, such as beacons, and that the evolution of seamless retailing is blurring the distinction between channels. For example, Wal-Mart CEO Doug McMillon publicly estimated that 10% of Wal-Mart’s mobile orders during the Thanksgiving period came from customers inside its stores.

Black Friday, Black Shmi-day



Particularly in the area of in-store sales, the Thanksgiving period underperformed compared to many experts’ expectations. However, reaching back to Nov. 1, sales for the month across channels were actually pretty healthy. This reflects the increasing number of retailers launching their holiday deals well before Thanksgiving, and possibly consumer fatigue with Thanksgiving-related sale hype.



The technology lesson here is whatever steps retailers take to fortify their IT networks to withstand the rigors of the holiday season starting on Thanksgiving now need to be taken a few weeks earlier. Assume that every system involved in engaging with a customer, executing a transaction or fulfilling demand (which includes most systems) will need to operate at increased capacity as of Halloween. Every little kid wishes the holidays would come sooner. If they grow up to work in retail technology, that wish will come true.