October provides positive signs for Cyber Five ecommerce sales 

Ecommerce holiday shopping kicked off with some familiar trends — consumers trading down, the intense hunt for discounts and increased spending — all of which fall in line with Signifyd’s earlier projections for Q4 spending.

Shoppers pushed online sales up 5% in October over the same month a year ago, according to Signifyd’s Holiday Season Pulse Tracker, living up to expectations. The upward trajectory was an encouraging sign as we move into serious holiday shopping in the form of the Cyber Five shopping festival.

October’s ecommerce sales mixed by vertical

As always, just how good October’s news was had everything to do with the vertical a merchant operated in. Grocery (up 20%), luxury goods up (13%) and apparel (up 7%) all performed above October’s average sales increase.

Meanwhile, retailers selling holiday favorites, including beauty and cosmetics (+4%), leisure and outdoor goods (+1%) and electronics (-2%) fell short of average ecommerce growth compared to a year ago.

“October was interesting. Overall sales growth came in right at our 5% projection. But if you dig into sales by category, you’ll find that retailers in some categories had a disappointing start to their holiday season,” said Signifyd Senior Data Analyst Phelim Killough, who analyzed the sales figures. “That said, we’ve yet to reach Black Friday and we have several weeks to go in what we’re still projecting to be a promising season for ecommerce.” 

October ecommerce sales 2024 vs. 2023

Indeed, Killoughs’ pre-season projection called for a  7% annual increase for the holiday season overall, with November sales dropping 2% below November 2023 and December coming in 18% higher than the previous year. Overall, sales during the Cyber Five — the period from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday — will be up 8% over a year ago, according to Signifyd’s analysis. 

The calendar splits Cyber Five sales between October and November

We should note, the disappointing November figure has everything to do with a quirk of the calendar that breaks the Cyber Five in two — Black Friday in November and Cyber Monday in December.

For an idea of how significant those two big days are when it comes to holiday sales, consider that December sales this year are projected to soar 18% higher than December 2023. (Thank you, Cyber Monday.) In fact, Signifyd projects that 40% of the spending jolt provided by the Cyber Five will be delivered in December this year. 

Besides the typical winners and losers by category, October was notable because while consumers spent slightly less (- 1%), they purchased significantly more items (15%) per order than they did a year ago. Killough says that generally indicates that shoppers are favoring cheaper alternatives, a trend that’s been visible in the data for months.

Shoppers also turned to discounts in bigger numbers in October than they did during October 2023. For the first five weeks of the fourth quarter, 34% of spending was done with a discount added to the order. Last year, the figure was 29% — not a huge difference, but enough to indicate that once again discounts will be crucial to attract buyers in 2024. 

Does a shorter holiday online shopping season matter?

Beyond watching for signs in October that holiday shopping enthusiasm was waning among inflation-weary shoppers, merchants and analysts were keeping an eye on two other factors with the potential to disrupt sales  — a shorter traditional holiday selling season and a presidential election. 

We’ll have to wait to see how sales are affected by the truncated period between Thanksgiving and Christmas — historically the heart of the holiday shopping season. In truth, while the Thanksgiving to Christmas period is a key shopping and selling period, holiday shopping starts months before the traditional season and so the actual selling season is no shorter than it has been in recent years. In fact, with so many consumers getting started in July, it’s actually quite long. 

As for the presidential election — it created little distraction for shoppers in October, but as in presidential election years past, it left its mark on and around Election Day itself.

How did Election Day affect holiday ecommerce sales?

Sales on Nov. 4, the day before the election, were tepid — up 5% year-over-year in the midst of significantly higher annual growth. On Election Day, sales dropped 2% from a year earlier, remarkable given the notable sales increases leading up to election week. (Online sales the week before the election were up 6.8% year-over-year.)

With the election over and a new administration coming in, it will be interesting to see if consumers trade short-term uncertainty for long-term uncertainty. 

If history is a guide, consumers will prove resilient — particularly in the holiday season.  And given October’s performance, retailers in 2024 should remain optimistic about their prospects for holiday 2024 as a whole.

Photo by Getty Images

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