2018 Winter Sales: A Very Profitable First Day
After an impressive Black Friday, e-commerce businesses were somewhat cautious about the start of the sales period. Indeed, we had observed exponential growth in traffic and sales during this “Black Weekend”, with a 170% increase in revenue alongside a 45% increase in traffic. Here are the first trends observed among our clients on Adwords during this first day of the sales.
A decline in search volume
Our first observation is a significant decline in searches during this first day, with an average decrease of 23%. However, the click-through rate was relatively better, averaging 10% higher than in 2017.
The good news in this context is that CPC levels decreased significantly for the same position.
Traffic shifted towards Shopping formats at the expense of traditional search campaigns.
A significant increase in profitability
This decline in traffic, combined with a shift towards Shopping formats, logically resulted in a decrease in advertising investment during this first day. However, revenue increased by 3% compared with the previous year. This had an immediate effect on the Cost of Sale, which decreased significantly by 41%.
In conclusion, we can note that Black Friday had a slight impact on this first day of the sales period in terms of search volumes, but profitability is very encouraging. The government is considering shortening the sales period in order to generate greater consumer enthusiasm.
As Stéphane Treppoz, CEO of Sarenza, explained on RTL:
“The sales are a commercial period that has existed for decades and that French consumers have become accustomed to, but it has become somewhat commonplace because it lasts a long time and, on the other hand, there is now an abundance of sales, private sales, floating sales and Black Friday, so consumers are confused.”
Study conducted on 50 French e-commerce Adwords accounts using Google Adwords, which recorded spending during the period of 10/01/2018, compared with the period of 11/01/2017.
Source: 4-week sales period: “A pragmatic reform”, according to Sarenza’s CEO
