Prime Day Sees Amazon Win

Thursday, July 25, 2019 - 18:56 by Graham Miller

The 48 hours over which Amazon operated its Prime Day event this year was especially fruitful for the e-commerce giant, with figures suggesting that it managed to generate more sales over this period than the cumulative totals of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, according to Internet Retailing.

175 million individual products were purchased from its site, with customers from the UK and 17 other nations around the world getting involved.

Statistics published by Hitwise suggest that more than four out of five transactions made via safe shopping online on Prime Day were attributable to Amazon, showing that its dominance of the e-commerce market was extended even further over the course of this event.

Interestingly, there was also a very slight dip in the number of visitors to its site recorded, even though customers were buying more products as individuals.

British consumers were especially interested in taking advantage of all that Prime Day had to offer, with over 84,000 new subscribers to Amazon’s next-day delivery and multimedia service signed up when it took place. Analysis also showed that there was a 52 per cent increase in the number of people searching the web for details of how to cancel their Prime subscription, perhaps indicating that some customers wanted to bag the discounts and then end their commitment before being caught up in monthly payments.

Conversion rates for Prime Day pushed close to one in ten, which is especially impressive given that average e-commerce conversion rates sit well below this level on an average day.

Separate studies from AppsFlyer found that rival retailers saw a 65 per cent decrease in the number of people installing their shopping apps in the run-up to Prime Day, which means that Amazon was definitely managing to poach customers from its competitors.