Black Friday online sales and footfall beat forecasts

According to Barclaycard data a record 1,184 transactions were recorded between 1pm and 2pm this afternoon, a 9% uplift on last year’s record transaction rate of 1,087 per second.

That followed a 12.5% rise in the volume of transactions in the period to 10am and a 6.5% uplift in transaction volume throughout the week.

Barclaycard Payments chief executive Rob Cameron said: “The fact that records are continuing to be broken suggests that appetite for Black Friday Sales is not abating and that despite many years of strong sales, demand is continuing to rise.”

Shopper footfall numbers to midday were up 1% year-on-year according to Springboard, better than its earlier forecast of a 4.5% overall decline.

Shopper numbers were down 0.7% across the high street during the period, but retail park and shopping centre numbers were up 2.2% and 3.3% respectively.

Embattled shopping centre operator Intu reported a 12.7% rise in footfall year-on-year, which operations director Gordon McKinnon attributed to “the proximity to payday and the day falling a week closer to Christmas than in previous years”.

Early birds were out in force to nab discounts as Black Friday searches peaked at 6am this morning, according to Google Trends data.

Electricals purchases looked likely to dominate Black Friday. Searches for Apple, Nintendo Switch and PS4 topped Google Trends data.

Between midnight and 3pm Boots registered its busiest trading time between 11am and 12 noon, with a total of 216 items ordered per minute and 194,000 orders placed overall.

John Lewis’ busiest online trading hour between midnight and midday was 9am to 10pm, when Apple’s iPad was the bestselling electrical product.

“Stores are better than expected. Online is still over-indexing but stores have been really busy throughout the week”

Jess Shepherd, Debenhams

Shop Direct retail managing director Sam Perkins flagged fashion, electricals and toys as its strongest-performing categories and said trading over the three-week period, its longest Black Friday promotion ever, was its strongest to date and in line with expectations.

Debenhams digital and international director Jess Shepherd said the department store group was “happy with where we are” on Black Friday sales, which were on track to be 800% up on a regular Friday. Shepherd said the post-payday timing had boosted sales.

She said: “It feels like the stars are aligning in terms of timing. It gave us all a bit of a challenge last year when it was a week before payday. Customers are in the right mindset to purchase, which is helping.”

Shepherd said: “Stores are better than expected. Online is still over-indexing but stores have been really busy throughout the week. There’s been queues out the car park and inside our stores. We don’t see those things as much as we’d like to.”

As of this 3pm this afternoon, Debenhams had 1.4 million visits to the website and an average of 280 items were sold per minute. The retailer was averaging around 1,600 visits per minute to Debenhams.com.

This morning, 10.41am was the peak minute when 680 items were sold, and the busiest hour for orders was between 10am and 11am and for web visits 8am to 9am, suggesting workers were searching for deals on their way to work.

Shepherd said 7pm to 10pm would be Debenhams’ peak trading hours so it was still all to play for.

“The biggest trend we’ve seen this year is mobile,” she said. “So far, 75% of online visits have come via mobile and revenue is up 11% year on year. Conversion is much stronger. People are on a mission to purchase, which chimes with the fact that we have more deals today than last year.”

Mobile visits peaked between 6am and 7am, suggesting people were searching for deals as soon as they woke up.

Today, Debenhams.com will sell 137 items of clothing per minute and 47 beauty products per minute.

Shepherd said beauty was Debenhams’ big sales driver. Across online and stores today, Debenhams expects to have sold three bottles of fragrance every second.