Gadget

Black Friday, Cyber Monday, shot the lights out

Arthur Goldstuck

Black Friday and Cyber Monday continues to be a hit in South Africa, with both days exceeding expectations.  

“Black Friday did not disappoint,” says Solly Bellingan, head of customer relations at BankservAfrica. “Despite the tougher economy, it seems South Africans took advantage of the days’ special deals with in-store and online transaction volumes reflecting strong year-on-year growth. Both days have certainly made their mark amongst local retailers and shoppers,

South Africans shopped up a storm with the total number of Black Friday transactions processed by BankservAfrica, in-store and online, at 7,077,117 (*) in 2019 – 36% up from 2018’s 5,204,594. This translates into a total spend of R6-billion, an impressive 106% increase on 2018’s R2.9-billion.

When compared to 2018, it seems bargain hunters decided to get the best deals early with a 33% year-on-year increase in sales at midnight. The 12-hour period between 06:00 and 18:00 proved to be busiest, with similar volumes being processed each hour. The highest number of transactions processed in a 60-minute period was between 10:00 and 11:00 at a volume of 595,792.

“3D-Secure, our online card authentication service, i.e. transactions that require a one-time pin(**), showed steady growth this year with a 32% year-on-year increase on Black Friday and transaction volumes  reaching a total of  534,828,” says Bellingan. The busiest shopping times were between 09:00 and 10:00 in 2019 compared to the earlier start in 2018 at 08:00 to 09:00. 

“The most expensive online transaction recorded on Black Friday was for a hospitality purchase of  R10,067,400 by an international company. The most uses by one card was 83. During peak, we processed  717 transactions while the average was 371 per minute for the day.”

Cyber Monday was less active than Black Friday with a 42% growth in online transactions that reached a volume of 249,908 in 2019 (up from 176,595 in 2018). However, in both years, most of the transactions took place between 10:00 and 11:00, with the most expensive being R1,997,800 and 151 uses by one card. The highest average transactions per minute was 322 at peak and 173 per minute for the day.

“This year’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday data mirrors the global data of record-breaking sales – and the BankservAfrica featured figures are only a portion of the entire sales figures for both days,” says Bellingan. “It will be interesting to see if these manage to outpace festive season spend this year.”

Visit the next page for insights gathered through the PayGate payment gateway.

A better sense of online sales by themselves can be gleaned from the data gathered by DPO South Africa, South Africa’s largest payment service provider and owner of the PayGate and Payfast payment solutions.

“It is clear that Black Friday and Cyber Monday are here to stay. South African shoppers have embraced the event and have planned well in advance this year” says Peter Harvey, MD of the DPO Group in Southern Africa, which comprises payments solutions PayGate, PayFast and SiD Secure EFT. “The buying patterns also show us that we are dealing with a more mature consumer.”

Harvey says merchants kicked off the shopping holiday earlier this year, running specials from Sunday to Thursday night, ahead of the main event on Friday 29 November. 

PayGate numbers show that the daily transactional volume between Monday and Thursday was 50 percent greater than a normal trading day. Black Friday trading volumes spiked by 400 percent, compared to an average trading day. Overall, there was a 35 percent year-on-year transactional volume growth for the Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping week.

The average transactional value per basket this year was R1,406, compared with R1,502 in 2018. 

“This statistic speaks to the fact that the consumer went into the shopping extravaganza with a plan this year.,” says Harvey. “Overall, we saw a more educated market who knew what they were doing. They picked up on the opportunities ahead of time, did their homework and worked the specials. The early start on the sale offerings also saw shoppers picking up on specials and not gambling on last minute deals that they may otherwise miss in the frenzy of Friday shopping.”

Harvey says the industry also benefited from better preparedness this year.

“The industry as a whole was much more resilient and, bar a few glitches that could have been Internet load related, there was no noticeable downtime. Despite the large increase in checkouts, PayGate was able to comfortably deal with the extra traffic, hitting 353 transactions per second (TPS), compared to around just under 100 TPS last year,” he says. 

Harvey says that the rest of Africa is showing significant interest in how Black Friday and Cyber Monday is playing out in South Africa. He believes digital retailers to the north will kick off a sustained Black Friday drive in 2020. 

“Our Group CEO and the DPO executive team traveled down from Nairobi to spend the day with us. African digital retailers are certainly paying attention, and the lessons learned from South Africa gives them a great head start when it comes to rolling out their own initiatives next year.”

“Overall the 2019 Black Friday experience has been a great success. The South African consumer has shown that they are savvy shoppers and our banking and payment industry is ready to meet the challenge as digital commerce continues to grow. Merchants can take heart knowing that there is still some fat in the market and should be planning now to ensure they capitalise on the upcoming festive season.” 

DPO provided the following data from PayGate numbers:

Year-on-year growth 2018 to 2019

Visit the next page to see how South Africans shopped online at OneDayOnly.co.za and Superbalist.

Meanwhile, online deal site OneDayOnly.co.za has provided insights from its own data, to show where, when and how South Africans shopped on its site.

High traffic times included:

2018: 06:00, 8:00, 11:00 and 15:00

2019: “All the time! The biggest peak was at midnight, 6am (when our first newsletter went out) and noon (when our second newsletter went out). The second spike was expected as our Lunchtime Deal was amazing, and we sold 18 x more units than on an average Lunchtime Deal!”

The average user session on Black Friday was:

2018: 07 minutes 41 seconds (3 times longer than a regular session)

2019: Very similar to above

A regular day: 3 minutes on average

Month-on-month turnover

Up by 83% from October to November

Top 5 sellers – turnover

Top 5 sellers – units sold

Most popular categories

1. Homeware, including beds, duvets and furniture.

2. Tech products

3. Apparel, including New Balance Sneakers and Bata Veldskoens.

Largest order (spend):

The biggest order placed was for just under R41,000, which included 2 couches and a kiddies game, with several customers spending over R20,000 on the day! Most people put several items in their cart at a time. 

Visit the next page to see how South African kicked off Black Friday at Superbalist.

At Superbalist.com, they knew they would have their biggest Black Friday to date by 7am, when they had already received nearly 20,000 orders.  

Co-CEOs Claude Hanan and Luke Jedeikin said that, at 1 minute past midnight, there were 16,000 shoppers on-site. By 12:30am, this rose to 21,000. Jedeikin says: “Watching in real-time is a phenomenal experience. Mobile growth in particular has been huge at around 83% of revenue. The Superbalist team works really hard behind the scenes to ensure our shoppers have the best, most convenient experience. We use our data-led approach to ensure there’s a huge selection of all the items we know our shoppers are searching for.”

At that stage, the best-selling products were a Sixth Floor Antique printed rug, Pop Candy jean & top set ,and Pop Candy sneakers. This year’s most wishlisted item was Converse sneakers. 

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