Tag Archives: shipping

CyberWeek Nets $6 billion in Sales



cyberweek
cyberweek

It’s going to be a really good holiday for some folks. Call it Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Cyber Week or a big pain in the… Well, whatever you call it, retailers are calling it a success as the last week netted $6 billion in sales – 3 individual days hit over $1 billion individually.

comscore released their report of holiday digital spending in the last 30 days. Overall, $18.7 billion has been spent online – a 15% increase on Cyber Monday from last year.

2011 Holiday Season To Date vs. Corresponding Days* in 2010
Non-Travel (Retail) Spending
Excludes Auctions and Large Corporate Purchases
Total U.S. – Home & Work Locations
Source: comScore, Inc.
Millions ($)
20102011Percent Change
November 1 – December 2$16,257$18,69715%
Thanksgiving Day (Nov. 24)$407$47918%
Black Friday (Nov. 25)$648$81626%
Thanksgiving Weekend (Nov. 26-27)$886$1,03116%
Cyber Monday (Nov. 28)$1,028$1,25122%
Week Ending Dec. 2$5,164$5,95915%

*Corresponding days based on corresponding shopping days (November 2 thru December 3, 2010)

The big promotion was free shipping. More than half the transactions included shipping (63.2% during Cyber Week).

“Free shipping is one of the most important incentives that online retailers must provide during the holiday season to ensure that shoppers will convert into buyers,” said  comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni. “Consumers have come to expect free shipping during the holiday promotion periods, and retailers, in turn, have realized that they must offer this incentive if they want to maximize their share of consumer spending – especially at the outset of the shopping season. In fact, more than three-quarters of consumers say that free shipping is important to them when making an online purchase, and nearly half say they will abandon their shopping cart at checkout if they find free shipping is not being offered.”

Comscore also polled people (1,000 internet users) to ask the value of shipping. 36% said it was very important, while 42% said it’s somewhat important and 12% was neutral.

Overall, people are feeling more comfortable shopping online. With a $6 billion dollar weekend and $1.25 billion Cyber Monday, it will be interesting to see what happens next year for CyberWeek.


MarineTraffic.com – Live Ships Map



MarineTraffic.com is a live map showing the location of shipping of 299 GT (gross tonnage) or over. Sounds boring but in fact it’s a totally awesome mashup of data. You can zoom into your local coast and see what’s pottering about or you can follow a ship in the news and see what’s happening to it.

Here’s what’s going on in the English Channel:

Here are the ships waiting to go through the Panama Canal.

You can also follow ships that are in the news. Here’s the MSC Opera which lost power in the Baltic and the tug Svitzer Trym in attendance. If you click on a ship you can get further details, including the speed and pictures of the vessel.

Finally, here’s one of the UK’s latest warships undergoing trials. HMS Dragon is a Type 45 destroyer.

There are additional clients for iPhone and Android users. And if you want to get notifications of what your favourite boats are doing, you can sign up for alerts and notifications.

Great resource if you want to see what’s going on, especially if you have a sea view and you want to know what’s floating past.