Monday – the first day of the week may not be a favourite day in our minds, but they are generally the most popular day of the week for online shopping.
According to Criteo (which represents a growing network of 15,000 advertisers across the globe and reaches 1.2B shoppers per month – one-third of all internet users in the world) post-Black Friday, the first day of the week proved the most popular shopping day, with their data showing sales spikes of up to 15% on the Mondays before Christmas.
Gift Vouchers are Big Business
In the UK alone the gift card and voucher market is estimated to be worth £5.6 billion per year.
SK Chase is the leading gift voucher company for luxury hotels, making it very easy for them to manage and sell their gift experiences (such as afternoon tea, dining, spa, golf and overnight stay gift experiences) online, via their website. We do this by providing a fully responsive sales platform, cloud based management system and fulfilment service.
We’re is trusted by over 300 four and five star UK hotels and resorts, including spas, golf courses and restaurants. With a number of clients generating in excess of £1 million per year in gift voucher revenue alone, we have unique insights, based on dynamic gift voucher data from 2003 to the current date.
We can reveal that gift voucher sales follow online shopping trends – Mondays tend to be the most popular sales day for gift vouchers throughout the year, and this is particularly visible in November and December with sales spikes of on average around 45% (excluding Cyber Monday sales, where sales increase by over 80%).
Why Mondays?
Just what is about Mondays that turn people to shop online? What can help us understand what’s behind ‘Monday’ that reveals why people part with more on their money on this day of the week?
Blue Mondays
People expect Mondays to be lousy and are hunting for a ‘high’ that will lift their spirits. Simply put – ‘gifting’ (both the buying and the giving) makes us feel good.
In a study by researchers at the University of Sydney, Australia, people were asked how they were feeling, once a day, for seven days. Then on the eighth day, they were asked how they remembered feeling on each day of the previous week. Although there wasn’t much difference in actual moods reported from day to day, people remembered hitting a low point on Monday. This suggests that their memories were biased by their beliefs. They expected Mondays to be miserable.
For many employees, Monday means time to get back to the workday grind. And it looks like retail therapy is often the remedy buyers use to cope with a blue Monday – a light way to ease back into the week.
Fresh Inspiration
Monday is a day of new beginnings. A chance to collect your thoughts, make those ‘to do’ lists and plan to get things done. And with weekends often spent seeing family and friends, Monday is likely to be the day people focus on presents, having inspiration & ideas from their two day break.
People move across devices and channels as they research in one and buy in another. People tend to spend less time on their computers over their weekend (spending more time instead on their smartphones!), but when they get to the office on Monday, they are on their desktop computer – ready to… shop!
This is backed up by our 2016 stats, that reveals more people browse on a gift voucher website via a mobile device, but actually are more likely to buy using their desktop computer.
November – December 2016
Sessions
Desktop 42.5% | Mobile 19.4% | Tablet 38.1%
Conversions
Desktop 62.9% | Mobile 20.4% | Tablet 16.7%
Monday Offers
During the holiday season, online shopping on Mondays is especially tempting, with retailers promoting sales for Cyber Monday, Manic Monday and such like. So it’s a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy: retailers know that people are shopping on a Monday, so they further entice them to buy with variety of offers, such as time limiting promotional codes. And people shop on Mondays, because that’s when they’re seeing and can action an offer in their email ‘in’ box.
Mondays – they may be manic, mega, cyber, green or blue – but they are always mighty!