Same time of year, different behaviour
So, how exactly did this year’s Halloween ecommerce trends differ to the past? Well, last year, we saw an increase in Halloween transactions, up 60% in the week leading up to the spooky holiday on the year before. This year, Halloween transactions were up 9% compared to the three weeks prior in October, showing that the Halloween holiday really has legs.
Devilish devices
This year, it seems that Halloween consumers choosing to shop online have been drawn to mobile, with device usage looking as follows...
This is likely down to the convenience that comes with using mobile, any time, anywhere, as well as ever-improved technology. At the first part of the week leading up to Halloween in particular, it is clear that mobile is the leading choice for many. For example, we can see that on both 27th and 28th October, 53% of transactions were via mobile, while 35-36% was via desktop and just 11-12% was via tablet.
What does this mean for retailers?
According to Statista, UK consumers had been set to spend £419 million over the Halloween period. The fact that we can see a significant growth in ecommerce transactions on the build up to Halloween shows that this holiday is still firmly part of consumer culture in the UK.
Preference for mobile has been growing rapidly for the last few years, and this year’s Halloween mobile usage shows that it is here to stay, and looks set to continue growing. This means ecommerce retailers should be paying extra attention to their mobile UX, ensuring that customers across devices have the same great experience.
Making the checkout easier by adding a guest checkout option, progress indicators and implementing tools such as type-ahead address verification helps ensure friction is reduced and mobile shoppers are able to quickly and easily progress through the checkout process.
We’ll be looking at ecommerce trends over the golden quarter - Black Friday, Cyber Monday and the build up to Christmas, so stay tuned for more.
