The top ecommerce trends from record-breaking Amazon Prime Day 2024

Helped by some deep discounts, Amazon Prime Day, an annual two-day ecommerce event that ran July 16 and 17, generated a record $14.2 billion in U.S. online sales this 12 months. That’s 11% greater than last 12 months, based on Adobe Analytics, which pulled data from 1 trillion visits to U.S. retail sites across 18 product categories.

Here are the top trends for digital marketers to contemplate as they plan for holiday sales in the approaching months. Although the event is hosted by ecommerce giant Amazon, other chain stores and specialty retailers ran concurrent promotions.

Dig deeper: Amazon Prime Big Deal Days in October

Mobile boost

Much of the Prime Day growth was driven by mobile. A full $7 billion of sales went through mobile devices, marking an 18.6% increase over last 12 months.

Turnaround for big-ticket items

Economic headwinds hit growth on big purchases in the primary half of 2024. However, a few of these same product categories were in big demand during Prime Day.

Home, furniture and appliance categories saw a 76% boost in sales, Adobe Analytics found.

On the primary day alone, the house furnishings category saw a doubling of online transactions and a conversion rate up 75%, based on commerce media platform Criteo.

“The electronics, apparel, and furniture categories make up nearly half of ecommerce spend but have seen low single-digit growth in the primary half of 2024,” said Vivek Pandya, lead analyst, Adobe Digital Insights, in a release. “It’s clear now that the Prime Day event has been a catalyst across these major categories, with discounts deep enough for consumers to hit the buy button and upgrade items of their homes.”

Discounts were higher this 12 months

Salesforce, which analyzes ecommerce buying in its Commerce Cloud (including the activity of 1.5 billion shoppers), agreed with Adobe that deeper discounts spurred sales.

U.S. Prime Day discounts averaged 22%, up 10% over last 12 months. The categories with the best discounts were general apparel (average discount of 33%), home and furniture (21%) and health and sweetness (21%).

“For the primary time in an extended time we’re seeing order volumes turn positive and discounting is high,” said Caila Schwartze, director of consumer insights for Salesforce. “The lesson is an easy one — if retailers deliver on discounting and providing true value, they may release that pressure valve of built-up demand and see incredible success. If they don’t, retailers may risk losing out as shoppers will go elsewhere.”

Prime Day halo effect keeps expanding

The variety of participating mass retailers and multi-category specialist retailers also running sales was up 88%, based on Criteo. The company analyzed over 1,300 retailers and ecommerce sites outside of Amazon.

Twenty-eight percent of outlets either hosted their very own sales events or benefitted from a halo effect this 12 months, seeing a 73% increase in online transactions on Prime Day’s first day. This boost was 21 percentage points higher than last 12 months, which raised transactions 52% above a median day of ecommerce business.

Helping teachers ‘clear the list’

Even though it’s summer vacation time, teachers were top-of-mind on social during Prime Days.

Social marketing company Sprout Social tracked nearly 296,000 Prime Day-related social mentions over the 2 days, and #ClearTheList topped the list of top mentions.

This shout-out refers to teachers’ wish lists for the 12 months ahead. By using this hashtag, students and their parents showed intent to chip in and get something for the classroom for the varsity 12 months ahead. #ClearTheList garnered 18,447 mentions in Sprout Social’s survey, and “teacher” was mentioned one other 11,173 times.

Here are the opposite top social keywords:

Kindle: 13,506 mentions
Samsung: 7,099 mentions
Apple: 4,568 mentions
TV/television: 3,821 mentions
Watch: 2,493 mentions
iPhone: 2,313 mentions
Air pods: 2,022 mentions
Alexa: 2,000 mentions

Total engagement for the 296,000 mentions included nearly 1.2 million likes, comments or shares — amounting to 14.74 billion potential impressions, based on Sprout Social. Sentiment was split between 61% positive, 29% neutral and 10% negative engagements.

TikTok Shop ‘Deals For You Days’ no match for Prime Days

TikTok Shop launched “Deals For You Days,” a social commerce promotion, on July 9. The influence of TikTok creators on younger consumers isn’t in query. In terms of performance, it posed no threat to Prime Day — a minimum of this 12 months.

Salesforce found “Deals For You Days” didn’t drive value or higher discounts amongst retailers.

GMV (gross merchandise value) growth was down 6% throughout the TikTop Shop promotion, whereas it increased 3% during Prime Day.

Discounts were also lower during “Deals For You Days” than on Prime Day — 18% versus 22%, based on Salesforce.

“Comparing not only Amazon’s Prime Day but other sales events as well, TikTok’s event marks a turning point,” said Roy Avidor, CEO of multichannel growth platform Cymbio. “Brands will look to get much more involved in social commerce in the approaching months, as that is where consumers are and where consumers need to shop.”

“While Amazon Live hasn’t enabled brand engagement outcomes as potently as many other video and social commerce platforms, Amazon is a significant beneficiary from the broader social commerce sector (videos referencing Amazon Prime Day amassed 400 million views on TikTok last 12 months),” said Uren Dhanani, vp at global investing firm ComCap. “It stands to reason that TikTok would need to redirect a portion of those eyeballs to its own TikTok Shop and ‘Deals for You Days’ event this 12 months, but overall, we expect TikTok and social commerce to proceed to spice up Prime Day sales as an alternative of constructing a dent in them.”

The TikTok Shop and Amazon Live square-off will likely only intensify as we head into the vacations.