Prime Day 2016 Was Amazon’s Biggest E-Commerce Day Ever with Orders Up 60% Worldwide

Yesterday’s checkout glitches didn’t impact Amazon’s ability to pull off another successful Prime Day sales event, as it turns out.

The online retailer announced this morning, without giving specific figures, that its Prime Day 2016 was the “biggest ever.”

Not just in terms of other Prime Days, either, but the “biggest day in the history of Amazon.”

Tuesday’s customer orders were up by more than 60 percent worldwide, compared with last year’s Prime Day, and up by more than 50 percent in the U.S. Amazon says it was also the “biggest day ever” for Amazon devices globally.

This contradicts early reports that seemed to indicate that Amazon’s Prime Day 2016 U.S. sales were flat, according to ChannelAdvisor. However, ChannelAdvisor doesn’t monitor Amazon’s first-party sales, like those on its own devices – it only examines a sample of Amazon seller data.

Instead, Amazon’s announcement is more in line with analyst expectations of Prime Day doubling last year’s sales, potentially even hitting close to a billion, some believed.

Amazon had discounted a variety of its devices, including Kindle e-readers, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Echo speakers, and more. These discounts were clearly able to boost Amazon’s overall sales for the day, as was the fact that Amazon better spread out its sales throughout the day, compared with last year. Many of its limited-time “Lightning deals,” for example, launched in the evening on Prime Day.

The retailer says that it sold over 2.5 times more Fire TV devices compared with last year, and Fire TV Stick was the best seller globally of all Amazon’s devices. Amazon said it sold hundreds of thousands of Kindle devices on Prime Day, as well.

In the U.S., Amazon device sales were up by 3 times, compared with Prime Day 2015. And Prime Day was the biggest day ever for Amazon’s smart connected speaker Echo, which was also up over 2.5 times from last year. Current Echo owners were even shopping Prime Day via their speakers, the retailer notes, as Prime members bought on average one Alexa-exclusive deal per second via voice.

Amazon didn’t tout how many of its Dash buttons sold – the push-button ordering dongles that were marked down to $0.99 on Prime Day – but said that top brands were Cascade, Charmin and Tide.

Other top sellers included TVs (more than 90,000 sold), over 2 million toys and over 1 million shoes, 14,000+ Lenovo laptops, 23,000+ iRobot vacuums, over 200,000 headphones, and more.

Just as important, Amazon seems to have recovered from last year’s consumer backlash against Prime Day. Despite its great numbers in 2015, Amazon customers derided the sales event as “an online garage sale” due to the junky nature of some of the deals, and their inability to catch the best offers before they were sold out.

According to Adobe Digital Insights, which tracked over 4 million social engagements by online consumers, people were happier this year with Prime Day than in 2015.

38 percent of overall sentiment was related to sadness this year, compared with 50 percent last year. Joy increased to 31 percent, up from 23 percent in 2015. 22 percent of sentiment was attributed to admiration and 9 percent to surprise, both which tend to be on the positive side of the scale.

In addition, even those who were complaining online weren’t doing so because of deal quality. Instead, the checkout glitches – a purely technical matter – were to blame.

Adobe also noted that the most positive chatter was around Kindle products, Echo, and the Xbox One bundle.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering – Amazon says it will being doing Prime Day again next year. No surprise there.

Source: TechCrunch

Amazon’s Prime Day 2016 Highlights

Globally:

Sold over 2.5x more Amazon Fire TV devices compared to Prime Day lastyear – Fire TV Stick was the best-selling Amazon device.
More than two million toys and more than one million pairs of shoes were purchased by customers on Prime Day 2016.
More than 90,000 TVs were purchased on Prime Day 2016.
Hundreds of thousands of Kindle e-readers sold on Prime Day.
Prime member orders on the Amazon app surpassed Prime Day 2015 mobile app orders by more than 2x.
More than a million customers used the Amazon app for the first time on Prime Day to shop and to watch-a-deal.
The Prime Photos sweepstakes had two million submissions worldwide during the lead-up to Prime Day, the winner will be randomly selected on or about July 14.

Prime Day 2016 highlights from the U.S.:

Amazon devices were up over 3x compared to Prime Day last year.
Biggest day ever for Amazon Echo – up over 2.5x compared to previous record day.
The most popular Amazon Dash Button brands purchased on Prime Day were Cascade, Charmin and Tide.
Members purchased over 215,000 Instant Pot 7-in-1 Multi-Functional Pressure Cookers.
Members purchased over 200,000 headphones.
Members purchased over 24,000 Double Hammocks by Vivere.
Members purchased over 23,000 iRobot Roomba 614 Vacuum Cleaning Robots.
Members purchased over 14,000 Lenovo laptops.
Members purchased on average one Alexa-exclusive deal per second during Prime Day using their voice.
Prime members had exclusive access to deals on top rated TV series and blockbuster movies to rent or purchase and instantly stream on the Amazon Video app on TVs, mobile devices, Amazon Fire TV, Fire TV Stick, and Fire tablets, or online – the top three Prime Day deal titles purchased or rented were: Deadpool, Kung Fu Panda 3 and 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi.
Customers saved over $1 million on Kindle Unlimited memberships on Prime Day and the Prime Day Lead-up Deal on July 5.
The most selected Audible audiobook on Prime Day was A Game of Thrones: A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 1.

Fire TV Stick was Amazon’s best-selling device globally. Other top sellers around the world, excluding Amazon devices were:

U.S.: Instant Pot 7-in-1 Multi-Functional Pressure Cooker
UK: Oral-B Pro 6000 CrossAction Electric Toothbrush with Bluetooth Connectivity and Smart Series
Spain: SanDisk USB memory stick
Japan: Calbee Breakfast Cereal 800 grams
Italy: Lexar JumpDrive
Germany and Austria: Tefal Jamie Oliver Frying Pan
France and Belgium: Game of Thrones DVD – season 1 to 4
Canada: Sennheiser HD 598 Special-Edition Over-Ear Headphones

Prime Day was another record-breaking success for the sellers and small businesses worldwide participating in the event. Small businesses and sellers on Amazon offering deals to Prime members saw orders nearly triple year-over-year on Prime Day – both worldwide and in the U.S. Feedback from sellers includes:

“On Prime Day we had one of the largest sales days in our company’s 108 year history. Prime Day is a win for sellers and customers.” – Larry Frankel, Director of Business Development, Huppins/OneCall
“Prime Day was our biggest day of the year! We more than quadrupled the number of sales from our previous biggest sales day.” – Emily Wilcox, Founder, Fayebeline
“We offered customers our best products at great deals and they responded in a big way. Prime Day helped us reach our highest sales day ever.” – Dovi Brafman, CEO of Sharkk
“On Prime Day we offered customers a great deal for the Nikon D3300 camera and the deal sold out within the first hour!” – Elazar Klein, Merchandising Director, Ritz Camera
“We are absolutely thrilled. Gaining access to millions of Prime members on Prime Day was a huge win for us.” – Brian Buccella, Vice President of Marketing at Segway
“Prime Day introduced Cielo to countless new customers and increased my daily sales 1000% in a single day!” – Christine Boerner, Founder, Cielo Pill Holders
“On Prime Day this year Etekcity experienced unprecedented growth not just in the U.S. but globally through Fulfillment by Amazon.” – James Li, Director of Marketing, Etekcity
“Amazon gives small businesses an amazing opportunity to get in front of a new audience with Prime Day. Prime Day was our biggest sales day of the year!” – Bridget Hilton, founder, LSTN Sound Co.

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