This holiday season, shoppers will turn to their most important shopping assistant — their smartphone — to research, browse and compare products in countless
moments throughout the day. This is especially true as shoppers head into stores for one of the biggest shopping weeks of the year. In fact, mobile searches per user were 11% higher in electronics stores and 8% higher in department stores on Black Friday last year compared to other weekends during the holiday season.
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To help you understand where shoppers will be and what to expect, we looked at foot traffic patterns in stores across the U.S. during Black Friday last year. We uncovered some surprising findings that should enable you to better connect with shoppers in and near your stores.
Black Friday shoppers don’t exactly rise and shine
Contrary to the notion that most people head to stores in the morning, we found that Black Friday store traffic tends to peak in the afternoon, typically between 2-4 pm.
2 Additionally, since some stores now open on Thanksgiving Day, we also saw an increase in foot traffic on Thursday evening. In fact, department stores now see their peak traffic on Thanksgiving evening between 6-7pm.
Tip for retailers: Allocate enough budget across campaigns to support the increase in traffic as shoppers head to stores. During the afternoon, when store traffic is heaviest, consider increasing your mobile bids. Use the
mobile bid adjustment simulator to size your overall mobile opportunity and adjust your bids accordingly.
Black Friday isn’t the holy grail for all stores
For categories like electronics and cellphone stores, it should come as no surprise that Black Friday drives more foot traffic compared to any other weekend during the holiday season; in fact, store traffic is 2x higher in electronics stores and 1.6x higher in cellphone stores on Black Friday.
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However, there are many stores that don’t see their biggest crowds on Black Friday. Shopping malls, superstores & discount stores, and department stores have the highest store traffic on the Saturday before Christmas, while dollar stores have the most foot traffic on Christmas Eve — perhaps due to last minute stocking stuffers.
Tip for retailers: Use
location extension targeting to encourage shoppers, who are near your stores, to choose you. If you already run
local inventory ads, which trigger if your product is in-stock at a store nearby, you can add location extension targeting and reach customers who are anywhere from 0.4 to 40 miles from your store.
For more tips and tricks this holiday season, check out our
Holiday Shopping Readiness guide and
Holiday Shopping Survival guide.
Elizabeth Fabiani, Product Marketing Manager, Google Shopping
1 Google Data, U.S., Aggregated anonymized internal data from a sample of US users that have turned on Location History, from the period November 1 2014 - December 25, 2014. Queries were considered in-store if they occurred within 20 minutes of a user visit to the store.
2 Google Data, U.S., Aggregated anonymized internal data from a sample of US users that have turned on Location History, from November 28, 2014, Eastern Standard Time
3 Google Data, U.S., Aggregated anonymized internal data from a sample of US users that have turned on Location History, from the period November 1 2014 - December 25 2014.
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