The ecommerce behemoth has once again proven that people are getting much more comfortable transacting online.
Over the years, Amazon has continuously gifted its paid subscribers with additional perks like fast free shipping, a video streaming platform, and more. One of these perks is the annual Prime Day, where Prime members get access to exclusive deals and discounts. Prime Day 2018 took place on July 16th and 17th and saw a record number of shoppers and sales across 17 countries. The decision to extend Prime Day to a day and a half helped contribute to a record $3.4 billion in sales and over 100 million products purchased.
Compared to last year, this Prime Day was open to four more countries and lasted six hours longer. These factors, along with enticing sales on popular products like Amazon Alexa and Fire TV devices, resulted in July 16th having the largest number of new Prime member sign-ups in a single day. For Amazon, where sales are a secondary goal to growing the number Prime subscribers, this year’s results will not disappoint.
The first hours of Prime Day 2018 saw Amazon scramble to handle the surge of traffic which forced them to display a scaled-down front page and disable international traffic. According to documents obtained by CNBC, Amazon had failed to secure enough server capacity. The server issues persisted for several hours, but are not thought to have seriously impacted the day’s bottom line.
The growth of Amazon’s Prime Day is a great indicator of the state of the greater ecommerce industry. With continuous gains in revenue, sales, and new Prime memberships each year, there’s no doubt that ecommerce is not slowing down anytime soon. Further, the wide range of products purchased on Prime Day, from consumer electronics to household goods and groceries, shows that consumers are increasingly more comfortable making all of their purchases online regardless of vertical.
To get a full list of the best-selling products broken down by country, visit Netimperative for more details.
