By Kat Matfield
Cyber Monday is the nickname for the biggest online shopping day of the year, which usually falls on the first Monday in December. This year however, there were two competing dates being touted around: Monday 29th November and Monday 6th December.
We’ve looked at the data from the consumer electricals market – by no means the only thing people buy online, but one of the most popular categories – and our data suggests this year’s real Cyber Monday was, err, a Sunday.
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It’s still a bit early for complete sales data to have trickled through to our systems, so we looked at the number of people looking at electricals online. Sunday the 5th was the busiest traffic day of the year, over 10% higher than the following Monday.
So, unless everyone decides what to buy on Sunday and then waits til Monday to put their cash down, it was a Cyber Sunday this year. In 2009, the traffic peak coincided with the buying peak for the year, so there are good odds that the same is true this year.
2010′s Cyber Sunday was a bit earlier than last year’s Cyber Monday, but the explanation could be meterological. The early snow in late November had started to cause delivery delays by early December and, with more of the Great White Terror predicted, shoppers may have opted to order a tad earlier to ensure delivery before the big day.