E-commerce Retailers Obtain Crucial Intelligence for Black Friday 2025, According to Recent Study
In a new report, Ecommpay, the inclusive global payments platform, has provided valuable insights into the trends that shaped the 2024 Black Friday and Christmas shopping season. The report, published in partnership with the UK eCommerce Association, IMRG, and cookieless attribution software provider, Corvidae, analyses data from over 360 retail sites during the festive period, offering merchants strategic guidance for the upcoming 2025 Black Friday and Christmas season.
Key Insights and Trends
The report reveals that Black Friday 2024 experienced a 3.1% growth compared to the previous year, yet bounce rates increased by 3.8%. This indicates that while more shoppers visited, more also left without making a purchase.
Specialist retailers significantly outperformed multi-category retailers in year-on-year revenue growth, suggesting that niche or focused e-commerce businesses found greater success during the peak shopping periods.
Traffic from direct mail and email marketing decreased by 1%, signaling a shift or need for reconsidering traditional marketing approaches during Black Friday and Christmas campaigns. On the other hand, paid social saw a 1% uplift.
The average conversion rate during Black Friday week 2024 was 4.6%, providing a benchmark for merchants to gauge their sales effectiveness during key promotional periods.
The report highlights the critical impact of failed payments, with merchants losing billions annually due to false declines where legitimate transactions are rejected. Ecommpay's 'Try Again' feature, which allows customers to retry or choose an alternative payment method within the same transaction if the first payment method fails, is critical in reducing declines and preventing customers from abandoning the checkout.
Consumer Behaviour and Discount Types
While the report does not provide detailed specifics on discount popularity, it does analyse discount performance and abandonment trends, which are valuable for merchants in deciding promotional strategies.
Additional Contextual Trends
The insights are highly relevant for preparing e-commerce strategies not only for Black Friday but also the entire Christmas period, enabling retailers to adjust payment processing, marketing focus, and customer conversion approaches for November and December 2025.
The report also implies that evolving e-commerce technologies and strategies such as retail media, AI, and composable commerce platforms are influencing how retailers approach the holiday shopping season.
Preparing for the 2025 Holiday Season
Roy Blokker, Head of Strategic Sales at Ecommpay, commented that Christmas planning in July is a well-recognized trend in the retail sector for 2025. Merchants should ensure they have removed obstacles in the checkout journey to increase conversions. Ecommpay also allows merchants to present customers with a currency choice on the payment page.
More sessions started on product pages (36.9%) than home pages (12.6%), indicating customers arrived via specific product links. This underscores the importance of optimising product pages for conversions.
Overall, the Ecommpay report underscores the importance of analysing previous peak season data to optimise payment handling, marketing channel management, conversion improvements, and inventory planning for the upcoming 2025 Black Friday and Christmas sales periods. As many online retailers are planning marketing strategies and promotions to capitalise on the peak sales season at the end of the year, this report provides a valuable resource for businesses looking to stay ahead of the competition.
The report indicates that technology, specifically evolving e-commerce technologies such as retail media, AI, and composable commerce platforms, are playing a significant role in shaping retailers' strategies for the holiday shopping season.
Furthermore, the report suggests that businesses in the finance sector need to focus on improving their payment processing systems, as well as optimising marketing channel management and inventory planning, to capitalise on the upcoming 2025 Black Friday and Christmas sales periods.
