Cyber Monday flooded the Internet with deal-seekers searching retailer websites for Black Friday-like markdowns from the comfort of their homes. Compuware (News - Alert) Application Performance Management has already compiled top performers and key trends from the biggest shopping weekend of the year.
According to Compuware APM’s report, Cyber Monday’s fastest websites were Apple (News - Alert), Costco, JCPenney, Dell, and Overstock. The day’s fastest mobile sites were Office Depot, Barnes and Noble, Williams-Sonoma, Buy.com, and HSN.
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They also observed a few key takeaways about the state of retail. First, retailers are finally prepared to handle Cyber Monday (News - Alert) traffic; no major retailer suffered a significant outage. It is a good thing that they were able to handle high volumes this year with sales predicted to up 24 to 27 percent over last year. Although it’s still too soon to say, once all of the receipts have been counted, it is predicted that this will be the biggest holiday shopping season to date for online commerce. The highest volumes of Cyber Monday shoppers were online between 10 AM and 5 PM EST and 7 PM and 11 PM EST.
Everyone has been talking about the importance of mobile commerce for retailers for months now and they have been busily preparing their mobile sites for the holiday season. Did it pay off for them? Cyber Monday’s mobile volumes were lower than Black Friday’s (News - Alert) mobile volumes, when time, money, and energy spent on mobile sites paid off in a big way.
Compuware APM noted that mobile visits were definitely up since 2011; however, “…even as mobile grows, traffic to the sites Compuware monitors only saw 10 percent of their visitors access content with a mobile device.” They went on to assure retailers that mobile is still an important part of their sales, just not a big part of Cyber Monday.
“We agree that mobile is the fastest growing segment of the online commerce world, but on Cyber Monday, shoppers are still overwhelmingly reliant on traditional desktop and laptop browsers when they shop.”
Cyber Monday appears to have been a huge success this year, and Compuware is already considering it a win for online retailers.