The Sunday and Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend ranked fifth and sixth, respectively, while most of the other top spending days occurred during Cyber Week (November 30 through December 6, 2020). Ecommerce shopping dynamics shifted after Cyber Week, as click and collect played a more prominent role.

Cyber Five: Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday. One holiday season myth is that the top promotional days like Black Friday and Cyber Monday are becoming less important. The theory holds that as promotions seemingly kick off earlier each year, demand gets pulled forward in November and cannibalizes from the biggest days. The data simply doesn’t support this.

Yet, none of this should detract from the fact that Black Friday and Cyber Monday will still be important digital shopping holidays in the UK this year. The 16.7% growth in holiday ecommerce sales will be fueled by cost-conscious UK consumers looking for discounts.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday will both top $10 billion in ecommerce sales

The term "Cyber Monday" was first introduced to the retail world in 2005 via a press release from Shop.org. What is now the moniker of one of the biggest shopping holidays of the year was coined by members of the organization and its then-executive director Scott Silverman.

Despite protests, technical concerns and stiff competition from ecommerce rivals, Amazon managed to hold its most successful Prime Day yet. Though the company did not disclose its sales figures—or how many new Prime members were added—Amazon announced that it sold 175 million items during the two-day event and surpassed its combined sales total from Black Friday and Cyber Monday in 2018.

Attentive said that across its customer base, millions of subscribers opted in for SMS shopping messages each day between Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2020.

On-time delivery rates during the peak Cyber Five period—Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday—were 96.7% for UPS, 95.1% for FedEx, and 93.2% for USPS. During the week of Christmas, on-time rates were 97.6% for UPS, 96.5% for FedEx, and 94.7% for USPS. While these levels were down slightly from 2019, they were surprisingly strong considering the unique challenges of 2020.

She added that Vox Media also uses affiliate links on Twitter during tentpole sales events, like Amazon Prime Day, Black Friday, or Cyber Monday, taking users directly to retailer sites.

Ecommerce and other digital shopping options like curbside pickup, same-day delivery, and buy online, pick-up in-store (BOPUS) saw enormous growth during Cyber Week and the holiday shopping season. In fact, Cyber Monday was the largest online sales day in history, with at least $10.8 billion in consumer spending, up 15% from 2019, according to Adobe.