Brief:

• Shopping app traffic jumped 240% on Black Friday from a year earlier as consumers spent more time looking for holiday deals, according to a study ​of 45 retail apps on Poq's platform shared with Mobile Marketer. Revenue was 5.7 times higher on Black Friday than the average day during Q3, despite people spreading out their purchases across several peak holiday shopping days.
• Apps saw 3.5-times more sessions per shopper than both mobile web and desktop, indicating the power of apps to reengage people during the holidays, per Poq. Shoppers returned to apps more frequently than to other channels, as time spent on apps was 3.7-times greater than on the mobile web and 2.1-times more than desktop websites.​
• Poq observed several intraday trends that indicated when shoppers were most ready to make a final purchase on Black Friday. Transactions jumped from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. as early birds looked for deals and then went into a lull as people likely went to work. Buying activity picked up in the evening and peaked at 10 p.m., when apps generated most of their revenue.

Insight:

Smartphones this holiday season have cemented their role as key shopping platforms, with consumer activity and purchasing reaching new highs. While Poq's study was limited to the several dozen retailers that use its app commerce platform, its findings reflect broader industry trends seen elsewhere. On Black Friday, 39% of online sales came from a smartphone, a 21% lift from last year, according to Adobe Analytics. The company also found that almost two-thirds (61%) of online traffic to retailers were from smartphones, a 16% gain from the prior year.

Poq's findings can help to inform how mobile marketers prepare for future holiday shopping seasons. The company found that the mobile web accounted for 64% of total traffic, while 21% came from apps. With smartphone users checking shopping sites early in the day, marketers may want to consider heavier promotional activity during that time to grab consumers before they look elsewhere for deals. The end of the day also is a key time to reach these on-the-go shoppers as they seek the convenience of placing online orders and avoiding the holiday crush at brick-and-mortar stores.

Poq's study of retailers that use its platform confirms other research about the popularity of shopping apps on Black Friday. In the U.S., first-time downloads from the shopping section of Apple's App Store rose 8% to 1.8 million from a year earlier on Black Friday, per a separate study by Sensor Tower. Walmart boosted downloads 23% from a year earlier to become the top overall shopping app on the key holiday shopping day, knocking Amazon out of the top perch in the U.S. for the first time. Target, Best Buy, GOAT, Nike, Kohl's, Wish, Macy's and Adidas also were among the most downloaded shopping apps on Black Friday.