Did Prime Day Hit Its Stride In 2016?

Getting a holiday on the calendar and in the public consciousness is not easy to do, especially in the modern world. Usually holidays exist to commemorate big things – love, thankfulness, labor, independence, peace on earth and good will towards men – and over mankind’s 10,000 or so year history we’ve mostly assigned our bigger ideas and events commemorative days already.

The modern holiday inventor has to work especially hard to bring something innovative to the table – which means the list of people who have invented modern holidays with nearly universal recognition is extremely short. So short, in fact, that there are only three incontestable entries on it: Jack Ma and Singles Day, George Constanza (Dan O’Keefe) and Festivus and Jeff Bezos and Prime Day.

Prime Day is the newest entry onto the list – but it is hard to argue that it doesn’t deserve its spot, given the great expectations going into yesterday’s national celebration of eCommerce. Some were forecasting that Amazon would bring in half a billion in sales, others were wondering if Jeff Bezos would bump Warren Buffet and end the day the world’s third richest man. Those, of course, represent the more colorful pieces of speculation – but whether those turn out to be more factual or fanciful, Amazon has certainly redefined the middle of July not just for themselves, but for anyone else who wants to be a player in the eCommerce ecosystem.

For 24 hours, Amazon set the tune and the rest of commerce danced to it – which in and of itself is a pretty remarkable achievement.

Also somewhat remarkable is the degree to which Amazon managed to basically combine the central premises of the other two modern holidays into a single event – blending the eCommerce focus of Singles Day with the “airing of the grievances” that Festivus features. As happened with Amazon’s first run through of Prime Day last year – the question of how well things went this time around is somewhat up in the air.

Some sources note that sales were up, others are reporting sales as flat. Many were pleased with the great deals on big ticket items like 4K TVs – other are complaining that Prime Day was an excuse to sell them a nightlight for their toilet. Various headlines are touting the low drama day for Amazon, others are complaining that an early glitch and lousy deals meant the whole thing “kinda sucks, again.”

So what did everyone agree on?

 

The Checkout Glitch (And Other Issues)

Both Prime Day and The PYMNTS Checkout Conversion Index have a similar lesson to offer retailers everywhere: the moment a customer is trying to actually buy something is an incredibly poor moment to fail them.

The day’s biggest bump in the road came when shoppers early to the action in the U.S. and U.K. found they were unable to add certain discounted items to their shopping carts. The reported cause was simply the system being overwhelmed by the volume of consumers. This sparked the reaction one might expect in the digital age – as online shoppers suddenly unable to shop turned quickly to Twitter to begin the airing of the grievances portion of the day – hence the beginning #PrimeDayFail making the rounds yesterday.

The problem was resolved fairly early in the day – though not before customers had complained at length that the glitch had cost them on-time sensitive deals on Amazon – or announced Amazon’s technical problem had been Walmart’s gain as they were going to continue their celebration of Prime Day on a site that would actually sell them something.

After that resolution, the day’s social media debate settled into the expected trenches – with some folks highly satisfied with the deals on offer – particularly the deals on Amazon’s in-house hardware – and others highly dissatisfied with “Amazon’s annual garage sale.”

Both sides bring some merit to their argument.

The deals on Amazon gear were certainly present and notable – an Amazon Echo was $50 cheaper yesterday, the Tap was $30 off and the top-of the line Kindle Fire was $80 off. The already pretty cheap Dash buttons were being sold at 80 percent off for $.99. Most of the good deals that gained note were on electronics – consumers also seemed to favor discounts on televisions and laptops throughout the day.

The weird stuff on offer was also pretty present and notble – apart from the aforementioned toilet nightlight, there was also the “14K Gold Plated Ice Out Grillz” and the “Purr Power: Cat Purr Therapy For Relaxation” machine – which people found less broadly useful.

But, other than the rather cranky souls at Inverse – the general consensus was that “weird” deals were there intentionally and likely in the spirit of fun.

“I think last year it was kind of unintentional. This year it’s very intentional,” said Steve Osburn, a director at Kurt Salmon. “At the end of the day it gets people talking so it’s working.”

And talk they did. All in all, Amazon Prime Day got about 125K mentions on Twitter – up from about 75K last year – and though #PrimeDayFail did ride again, most reports indicate it popped up a fraction of the number of times it did last year.

 

Parsing The Sales Data 

So it seems by the social media reactions, people were pleased, amused or at least rarely outright angered. But did they buy?

That remains an open question – as early figures in the U.S. show results in line with last years Prime Day results – but not much ahead of them.

As of 5 pm EST, sales during Prime Day were flat in the U.S. when compared to last year – but up 12 percent in the U.K. But those figures come with a few caveats. The first is that it doesn’t include sales of Amazon’s hardware – which as we noted might be important given how Amazon parsed out the discounts.

Early releases out of Amazon – however – indicate that all in all, sales were up 30 percent for Prime Day 2016. Specifically, Amazon is reporting that sales for third-party merchants surged 30 percent compared with a year earlier, fueled largely by international demand.

“Led by strong growth internationally, we are seeing more than 30 percent increase over last year in the number of items sold by small businesses and sellers on Prime Day,” Amazon said in an e-mail, reflecting sales as of 3 p.m. New York time. “We are expecting a record day for small businesses and sellers on Amazon with many more deals to come today.”

It is also worth noting that Amazon decided to spread out the deals through out the day, instead of front-loading them as happened last year – which means results throughout the evening might also end up being significant.

 

Black Friday In July 

Whether Amazon clears the big sales figures for the day that were forecasted – or if Jeff Bezos actually manages to capture the title of 3rd richest man in the world – probably doesn’t matter, because the point of Prime Day is really Amazon Prime – and adding to that army of particularly dedicated and high spending consumers.

In the year between Prime Day 2015 and 2016 Amazon managed to add 19 million new customers to its flagship service, and over half of all of the site’s users are now members.

If Amazon Prime can be the catalyst that boosts that kind of surge in high spending loyalty each year – Prime Day will have earned a permanent place on the holiday calendar. The bump in sales in the middle of July will just be nice icing on the cake.