As one of the biggest shopping weekends of 2014 has approached, leading online retailer Argos predicted a UK mobile shopping frenzy this year with more visits than ever to its website and apps on ‘Cyber Monday’ coming from shoppers using smartphones and tablets.
With Christmas shopping kick-starting last Friday, on ‘Black Friday’ 28 November, as customers seeking bargains galore from the abundance of special deals this year, Argos was expecting online traffic to reach a peak on ‘Cyber Monday’ 1 December 2014. It is predicting more than five million visits to its websites and apps on the day, more than half of which will come from customers using mobile devices, at a rate of around 3,000 visits per minute as customers increasingly want to shop while on-the-go.
On Cyber Monday last year (2 December 2013) Argos saw over 3.6 million visits across argos.co.uk, its mobile site and apps. Online visits peaked between 11am-12pm, and again in the evening between 9pm-10pm.
This year an increasing number of shoppers are turning to Argos’ mobile apps to Check & Reserve orders where items can be reserved for immediate collection from store.
In line with this, the number of Argos app downloads – currently at around 10 million– is expected to increase over Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
In the spirit of its new advertising campaign, Argos is encouraging customers to GET SET for Black Friday with a special countdown clock on argos.co.uk to help build excitement for the great offers and outstanding deals they can expect all weekend across technology, toys, TV ranges and more.
David Robinson, Chief Operating Officer at Argos, said:
“Customer shopping habits are changing fast and more and more are wanting the convenience of shopping on-the-go or in front of the TV in the evening. Making mobile shopping easy has been our priority this year, and we’ve just launched our first ever Argos Collect Store at Cannon Street Underground Station for busy commuters to collect their orders on-the-go. We’ve also brought gift inspiration into the 21st century with some great new Christmas apps for smartphones and tablets.”
Argos’ 11 enormous distribution centres covering a total of 5.4 million square feet of floor space will have 6,100 warehouse workers and 1,000 delivery drivers helping to dispatch millions of gifts over Cyber Monday and beyond, including high-demand products such as wearable technology, video games, DisneyFrozentoys, Lego, hair care like the BaByliss Curl Secret, and Beats headphones, out to stores and homes on a fleet of 975 lorries and vans.
David Robinson continued:
“The race to get top gifts such as smart watches, DisneyFrozentoys and video games into customers’ hands quickly will be more intense than ever and our huge distribution operation is already gearing up. For the first time ever, 150 of our larger stores will act as mini distribution centres by supplying products to smaller stores nearby, so customers can get fast access to 20,000 products within hours wherever they are.”
According to the Adobe Digital Index, shoppers were expected to spend around £281 million this Cyber Monday, contributing to a 14 per cent growth of online Christmas sales year-on-year.
Argos.co.uk and its mobile site and apps received around 738 million visits in the last financial year making Argos the UK’s largest high street retailer online. 43 per cent of all Argos sales are online, with sales through mobile devices now representing 22 per cent of total sales.
Source| Home Retail Group
