Several reports indicate that during the 2016 holiday season, there was an increase in conversions from paid search advertising. Compared to 2015, the 2016 holiday season provided an increase of conversions by 18.63%, impressions up by 35.7%, and the average cost per click for paid search advertising increased 1.56%, while at the same time the average value of an order was reduced by 5.4%
NetElixir, a search marketing company, took a look at the statistics from the 2016 holiday season as compared to the previous year’s holiday season. The United States were broken down as follows: The largest increase of orders that were placed online occurred in the southern states, showing an increase of 19.9%. The Western states came in second, showing an increase of 9.5%, with the Central States coming in third with an increase of 6.5%, and the Northeast coming in last with an increase of 5.8%.
The report from NetElixir also showed that holiday ecommerce in 2016 was up 10.43% when compared to the holiday season of 2015. 30% of those ecommerce purchased were made from mobile devices.
With such an increase in online sales, one might think that everything was all roses in the ecommerce world. However, the whole picture is still yet to be seen. At the end of December, UPS reported that it anticipated during the first full week of January, more than 5.8 million packages will be shipped back to retailers as consumers return unwanted gifts for one reason or another. How accurate is the estimate of 5.8 million returns, only time will tell.
