Was adding extra hours to Prime Day worth it?
Extending Prime Day by six extra hours may not have been as valuable as Amazon hoped.
That’s according to “Prime Insights for Prime Day 2018,” a report from SimilarWeb, which said sales for Prime Day, which kicked off at 3 p.m. EST on July 16 and ran for 36 hours, were up 4.9% over the Monday/Tuesday block of Prime Day 2017. (Prime Day 2017 only ran for 30 hours). When evaluating traffic over the total number of hours that the sale was live however, there was a 12.6% drop in traffic per sale hour compared to 2017.
According to SimilarWeb’s data, Prime Day traffic was 54% above the baseline, peaking at over 180 million visits. Conversion rates skyrocketed to 11.4% —a 37% increase compared to the rest of the year.
Traffic on the Monday of Prime Day 2018 traffic was up around 15% on the Monday of 2017, which is understandable given the extra six hours of sale time. The full day, Tuesday July 17, saw slightly less traffic than July 18, 2017.
Hourly traffic in the United States throughout the 36 hours of Prime Day 2018 peaked within the first few hours of the event. Traffic rose again on Tuesday afternoon, without reaching the heights of the previous evening.
“It remains to be seen whether Amazon will persist next year with the 36-hour version of the day or return to a 30-hour Prime Day,” the blog reported.
On Monday, July 16, 2018, Amazon’s conversion rate was up 29% over its weekday average. On Tuesday, that number bumped up to a 46% increase. Over the two-day duration of the sale, the conversion rate for Amazon’s United States visitors reached an estimated 11.5%. Amazon’s average conversion rate for the first half of 2018 was around 8.4%, which is already much higher than other online retailers.
Amazon products like the Fire TV Stick, Echo Dot, Fire HD 8 Tablet and Kindle Paperwhite e-reader showed up consistently over the two shopping days. Prime memberships were also among the most-viewed products on both days, with Amazon gift cards gaining prominence on Tuesday, the data revealed.
Other products that piqued audience interests included the Instant Pot, which has remained on Amazon’s top products list since Black Friday, as well as Bose Noise Canceling Headphones, the Blink XT Home Security camera, and the TCL Smart LED TV.
“Other than the Instant Pot and the Kindle, Amazon’s most viewed products were not the most searched for, indicating Prime Day’s ability to bring customer attention to products they may not even be looking for,” the study said.
Prime Day also delivered for Amazon’s network of affiliates who make money by sending traffic to the e-commerce giant. Usually responsible for less than 1% of Amazon’s referral traffic, tech news website Cnet.com saw a significant uptick in outgoing traffic to Amazon, generating 2.2% of incoming referral traffic to the online retailer over the past 28 days, including the Prime Day sale.
Cnet was able to generate this extra traffic by optimizing its content for “prime day” related keywords. In the last 28 days, Cnet also received a higher proportion of “prime day” keywords than Amazon – 30.2% compared to Amazon’s 23.5%.
That’s according to “Prime Insights for Prime Day 2018,” a report from SimilarWeb, which said sales for Prime Day, which kicked off at 3 p.m. EST on July 16 and ran for 36 hours, were up 4.9% over the Monday/Tuesday block of Prime Day 2017. (Prime Day 2017 only ran for 30 hours). When evaluating traffic over the total number of hours that the sale was live however, there was a 12.6% drop in traffic per sale hour compared to 2017.
According to SimilarWeb’s data, Prime Day traffic was 54% above the baseline, peaking at over 180 million visits. Conversion rates skyrocketed to 11.4% —a 37% increase compared to the rest of the year.
Traffic on the Monday of Prime Day 2018 traffic was up around 15% on the Monday of 2017, which is understandable given the extra six hours of sale time. The full day, Tuesday July 17, saw slightly less traffic than July 18, 2017.
Hourly traffic in the United States throughout the 36 hours of Prime Day 2018 peaked within the first few hours of the event. Traffic rose again on Tuesday afternoon, without reaching the heights of the previous evening.
“It remains to be seen whether Amazon will persist next year with the 36-hour version of the day or return to a 30-hour Prime Day,” the blog reported.
On Monday, July 16, 2018, Amazon’s conversion rate was up 29% over its weekday average. On Tuesday, that number bumped up to a 46% increase. Over the two-day duration of the sale, the conversion rate for Amazon’s United States visitors reached an estimated 11.5%. Amazon’s average conversion rate for the first half of 2018 was around 8.4%, which is already much higher than other online retailers.
Amazon products like the Fire TV Stick, Echo Dot, Fire HD 8 Tablet and Kindle Paperwhite e-reader showed up consistently over the two shopping days. Prime memberships were also among the most-viewed products on both days, with Amazon gift cards gaining prominence on Tuesday, the data revealed.
Other products that piqued audience interests included the Instant Pot, which has remained on Amazon’s top products list since Black Friday, as well as Bose Noise Canceling Headphones, the Blink XT Home Security camera, and the TCL Smart LED TV.
“Other than the Instant Pot and the Kindle, Amazon’s most viewed products were not the most searched for, indicating Prime Day’s ability to bring customer attention to products they may not even be looking for,” the study said.
Prime Day also delivered for Amazon’s network of affiliates who make money by sending traffic to the e-commerce giant. Usually responsible for less than 1% of Amazon’s referral traffic, tech news website Cnet.com saw a significant uptick in outgoing traffic to Amazon, generating 2.2% of incoming referral traffic to the online retailer over the past 28 days, including the Prime Day sale.
Cnet was able to generate this extra traffic by optimizing its content for “prime day” related keywords. In the last 28 days, Cnet also received a higher proportion of “prime day” keywords than Amazon – 30.2% compared to Amazon’s 23.5%.