2021 holiday sales insights: CedCommerce merchants see the strongest sales growth

What does the eCommerce future hold?

The past two years recorded a significant shift of brick and mortar businesses to adapt to the online sales channels. With shoppers getting more comfortable purchasing things across eCommerce channels, the brands and retailers were predicted to put their strongest foot ahead of the holiday season in 2021.

The US holiday retail sales alone were forecasted to rise 9.0% from last year. Thus, recording the most substantial spike in more than 20 years. Several economic factors have signaled the uncertainty of 2021’s shopping season dynamics. Following this, eMarketer recorded $10.7 billion in sales on Cyber Monday in the U.S.

Although this data reported its first-ever decline (-1.4%) than last year, CedCommerces’ merchants gained record sales volume. They surpassed this criterion by receiving over $6 million revenue during the busiest sales days, i.e. from Friday 26th (Black Friday) to Monday 29th (Cyber Monday) – breaking all sales records.

Take a deep dive with us in our MOST RECENT 2021 Black Friday/Cyber Monday (BFCM) Weekend data report! ​​We observed the performances of millions of businesses and took a closer look at what happened throughout Black Friday through to Cyber Monday 2021.

We broke down top findings across eCommerce channels and analyzed CedCommerce holiday season trends to ascertain consumer buying patterns and help you compare, reflect, and prepare for 2022.

How CedCommerce helped merchants achieve a seamless selling experience during BFCM days?

Merchants sold across multiple channels

In the past years, Cedcommerce has collaborated with many marketplaces, including Walmart, Facebook, Google Shopping, and more, to facilitate certain perks to our merchants, including quick onboarding, top-notch customer support services, and more. Surprisingly, these BFCM sales days recorded a massive incoming of orders and revenues.

Walmart, Etsy, and Amazon topped in terms of revenue and orders The online marketplace giants Walmart and Amazon remained the go-to choices for shoppers and the other marketplaces. Walmart alone raked in a revenue share of 45.2% sales, while Etsy held on 21.9% of the total revenue, and Amazon stood at grabbing 14.9% of the share at CedCommerce. Among other marketplaces, Catch, eBay, Etsy, OnBuy, Wish, and more eCommerce channels happened to become shoppers’ choices.

Offering highly adaptable multichannel integration solutions

One of a few challenges while selling online, especially during the holiday season, is keeping inventories updated in real-time. While the demands were 2x, merchants struggled to display the correct cost and manually refute their inventories. To combat all such multichannel selling challenges, we at CedCommerce assisted our merchants with the best tailor-made multichannel integration solutions.

Automated operation flow and centralized control

These automated integration solutions are developed with the core intent of removing merchants’ manual work. We actively automated all the online selling operations of our merchants, right from onboarding to an eCommerce channel (/marketplace) to generate sales. Our dedicated account managers were aligned right from the moment when merchants installed our solution.

Merchants could easily maintain and control essential for listing feeds, quality, quantity, fulfillment, sync their store with the marketplace, and gain control on orders and cancellations from one centralized dashboard.

Efficient mapping and overcoming the supply-demand gap

The sudden spike in the demands leads to overselling and underselling, which often impacts merchants’ seller metrics. However, given the splendid features of real-time inventory syncing and bulk upload of products, our integration solutions outperformed, making sure none of our merchants face any supply-demand gap.

To help with the hassle-free selling process, our integration solutions also conducted automated profile-based category mapping to avoid any last-minute de-listing.

0% of CedCommerce merchants recorded a downtime during the BFCM sales days.

Providing content that makes a difference

We have been best-in-class Marketing and Content Solutions to our merchants and spread the word in the industry. Our blogs, podcasts, videos, tutorials, and other resources are full of information to help feed optimization, promote sales, brand enhancement, and so much more. With quarterly webinars, numbers of podcasts, newsletters, and emails we ensured to spread the right word and engage regularly with our merchants.

Our webinars are always focused on adding value to the eCommerce journey. One of the fine webinars happened to be with Anna Beck, a successful 6 figure Etsy seller who gave some essential tips and tricks to master Etsy sales this holiday season.

Unparalleled 24/7/365 human support

Our 24/7/356 availability is what distinguishes our team of CedCommerce experts. No matter the time of the clock, our global marketplace experts team is always there to assist merchants with any queries.

HOLIDAY TIP 2022: Is it worth choosing an integration provider?

By now, you must be wondering if you should consider opting for an integration solution provider for your business? Over 50% of merchants are looking for eCommerce automation tools.

Moreover, studies suggest that businesses relying on third-party solution providers are experiencing significant growth than those operating by themselves.

70% of businesses say that all their customer-oriented services are now being carried out remotely due to the emerging third-party tools, including integration software, automated payment and shipping tools, etc. These tools have increased productivity, sales, improved cybersecurity, and much more. Most SMBs claim to have achieved a more significant Return On Investment in less than three months. Businesses today are investing aggressively in these third-party tools and are switching to online sales channels. As the saying goes, it’s never too late to get on the right track, so look out for such third-party service providers who can prove to be your asset in the coming sales season.