Four sales trends to watch this Christmas

What’s in store for the festive season in 2017? We know it will break all records for ecommerce and that it’s important to get plans for commerce marketing solidified early.

The 2017 festive season will cap a year of retailer progress – making better use of their real-world footprints, refining merchandise focus, and embracing the power and potential of omnichannel.

Omnichannel marketing drives both awareness and sales through hyper-personalised experiences, no matter where shoppers find you, and it’s now standard to talk about new ways of marketing to shoppers on their terms and enabling them to buy whatever, wherever, and in whichever way they choose. The promise of shopper marketing – using data to talk to shoppers, not channels or devices – is finally being achieved.

Criteo’s new e-guide, ‘2017 – An Enlightened Festive Season’, is designed to help brands and retailers make the season especially bright. To help with early festive planning periods, we wrapped up the top 12 emerging trends and the top 12 tips we know will increase sales.

The insights are derived from 16,000 clients globally revealing how people shop all year – and at crucial periods like Black Friday and Christmas. With the Criteo Shopper Story 2017 survey, which will be released in the autumn, we also talked to hundreds of shoppers in the United Kingdom to find out what motivates them to buy and the journeys they go through to get to that perfect gift.

Here are just a few of the things to look forward to this festive season:

1. ‘Omnishopping’ is the new normal

Shoppers who both webroom (go online to research but buy in store) and showroom (see in store, buy online) are now the majority. In the UK, 90% of ‘omnishoppers’ exhibit both behaviours.

2. Black Friday is on the rise

The annual day of deals around the world with double digit growth in the UK in 2016. Black Friday is now the biggest day in ecommerce in the UK, overtaking Boxing Day, when the traditional sales begin.

3. Sales surges come earlier – and later

While shoppers are locking in big gifts earlier than ever in November, procrastinators are purchasing closer to Christmas as the expectation of two-day shipping increases. In 2016, Criteo data showed that there was a huge surge of conversions on the 22 and 23 December.

4. Don’t relax on Christmas Day

Christmas Day itself is likely to be the busiest mobile shopping day of the year. Last year, nearly two-thirds of online purchases made on Christmas Day were carried out using a smartphone.

Happy – almost – gifting season.

John Gillan is managing director for Northern Europe at Criteo.