Taggstar Real-Time Social Proof Messages Bring in Black Friday Millions

Even before Black Friday and Cyber Monday hit, November was Taggstar’s busiest month. We delivered close to half a billion real-time eCommerce messages, providing social proof for shoppers on some of the largest online retailers.

No one likes spending hours looking online and with the shopping frenzy of Black Friday, shoppers want simple, easy and quick customer journeys.  We like to think our technology is making online shopping simpler with social proof giving browsers the digital thumbs-up, saying that if it’s good enough for others then it’s good enough for them.

Without a doubt, the majority of our messages were delivered over the four day Black Friday / Cyber Monday weekend. Here’s a summary of the trends Taggstar saw over the period and the results we’ve seen.

Summary

Over 21% of all Taggstar messaging for November was delivered over the four day window from Black Friday to midnight on Cyber Monday, with 10am Black Friday morning (GMT) seeing peak requests. Black Friday alone saw a massive 251% week-on-week growth in messages served as shoppers searched online.

Web traffic over the large online retailers we work with started to climb from Thursday lunchtime, as retailers launched promotions early and shoppers went online to research. Number of messages served, orders completed and messages peaked on the morning of Black Friday. By 10am Taggstar was serving 750 real-time eCommerce messages per second, up from 400 messages per second in 2014, showing how demand for cloud-hosted social proof software from major retailers has grown over the year.

Over 30% of these messages highlighted trending items, as Taggstar’s Trend Algorithm® spotted popular items and helped drive interest among other shoppers.

Cyber Monday was more subdued with 66% less messages requested than Black Friday, possibly as shoppers took advantage of the longer promotional window. Throughout the busiest shopping period of the year, Taggstar’s technology was 100% available with no downtime, an illustration that the platform was operating at an enterprise level.

Most significantly, where shoppers completed the sale, we saw average order values on Black Friday alone of £110 – some £25 higher than the estimated average quoted by IBM Watson.

Key performance data when websites showed Taggstar messages:

  • Average conversion rate uplift

Four day average: 3% (Taggstar takes 2% as a strong average across the rest of the year)

  • Volume of Taggstar message requests (week-on-week growth):  The four days saw almost 21%  of all November messages requests. A year-on-year growth of 150%.

Black Friday: 38.7 million (251% w-on-w)

Cyber Monday: 17.3 million (14% w-on-w)

Four-day total: 87.4 million (162% w-on-w)

  • Completed orders on sites showing Taggstar messages:

Black Friday: 420,000

Four day period: An average of 43% less than Black Friday

  • Average order value (AOV) on sites showing Taggstar messaging (vs. 2015 average*)

Black Friday: £110 (estimated AOV of $127.84 / £85, IBM Watson)

Cyber Monday: £83

Four day average: £98

*IBM Watson Black Friday 2015 research

Conclusion

Taggstar made a marked difference to retailers over the Black Friday / Cyber Monday four day weekend. We delivered more messages, for more online retailers and for more of their customers to see than 2014.  When these shoppers saw one of our product trending message and clicked ‘buy’, they added to the ‘message cloud’, further promoting products and contributing to a conversion rate uplift of a massive 1% over the period.

Taggstar makes a difference to online retailer’s top line revenue over the busiest holiday shopping period of the year. That’s why the largest retailers in the UK continue to innovate with Taggstar to optimise the uplift in sales conversions throughout the year.  

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