As we’ve done each year, we’ll take a look at how a few hundred small merchant ecommerce stores fared during this holiday season. We’ll compare this to the big players as reported by IBM and comScore.

Big stats first

IBM reported the following:

• Thanksgiving sales up 14.3 percent over 2013, Average Order Value (AOV) down 1.8 percent

• Black Friday sales up 9.5 percent over 2013, Average Order Value (AOV) down 4.4 percent

• Cyber Monday sales up 8.5 percent over 2013, AOV down 3.5 percent

comScore reported:

• Thanksgiving sales up 32 percent over 2013

• Black Friday sales up 26 percent

• Cyber Monday sales up 17 percent

• Holiday season (Nov 1-28) sales up 15 percent over 2013

This paints a rosy picture for large online retailers.

Small Merchant stats for 2014 holiday season

We look at two sets of data:

1. Around 150 of the same stores that had sales in 2013 and 2014, for a good direct comparison
2. Around 300 stores in total, which may be different from year to year

These are small stores (typically less than 10 employees) that are hosted in our shared hosting environment.

Here is the data for the same stores year over year:

• Thanksgiving sales down 0.7 percent, AOV down 13 percent over 2013

• Black Friday sales up 22 percent, AOV down 10 percent over 2013

• Cyber Monday sales the same as 2013, AOV down 4 percent over 2013

• Holiday season (Nov. 1-28), sales up 3 percent over 2013

and for all small stores sampled:

• Thanksgiving Revenue Per Store up 17.3 percent over 2013

• Black Friday Revenue Per Store up 9.4 percent over 2013

• Cyber Monday Revenue Per Store down 17 percent over 2013

• Holiday season (Nov 1-28) Revenue Per Store down 0.3 percent

A few charts showing trends from 2012 to 2104

Thanksgiving Sales 2012-2014

Black Friday Sales 2012-2014

Cyber Monday Sales 2012-2014

Conclusions

For the big companies, the picture looks quite nice. Sales up across the board on the big shopping days and for November.

For smaller merchants, it’s not always so cut and dry. Sales were up slightly for the holiday season. Black Friday looks like it made a big jump in sales, which blends with the commentary that more shoppers went online on Friday rather than go to physical stores. It stands to reason online sales would be up.

Cyber Monday looks to be down a bit for small merchants. Does this make sense? My thought is once again the big e-tailers huge spend on advertising and deep discounts drew people to “shop big” on Cyber Monday.

We’ll post an update in January 2015 with a recap of the entire shopping season for small merchants.