Just in time for the barrage of advertisements and deep discounts that dominate the holiday shopping season, our November #cloudchat focused on retail analytics and the cloud. Our panelists, Greg Girard of IDC and John Squire of IBM, shared some highly insightful statistics and also opened a window to the exciting, “hyperpersonal” future of retail.
As per usual, the complete recap of the conversation is below, but since our chat was so full of hard facts and since the stats given were so interesting, I thought I’d call some of them out before you go through the full recap:
- Cloud computing is growing at a 26% CAGR (compound annual growth rate) per IDC vs. an overall IT CAGR of 4%, gaining 10% market share by 2013/14 vs 5% now. (Greg Girard, IDC)
- In 2010, the top day for sales from social sites was Thanksgiving; 3x more sales than any other day. (John Squire, IBM)
- Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the biggest sales days of the years online. Thanksgiving showed that shoppers will buy without stores–up 30% YoY. (Squire)
- Only 5.5% of online shoppers convert and over 50% of traffic is paid. (Squire)
- IBM Benchmark data, which provides data in real time for the aggregate of over 500 online retailers in the U.S., shows mobile users generating 15% of all online retail sales for the 2011 holiday season. (Squire)
- IBM Benchmark forecasts 2011 online holiday sales up 15%. (Squire)
